A few of my many interests include healthy eating, home made meals and home made ingredients, and WHY home made is healther.
One thing I make a point of doing is always making home made broths and stocks instead of buying canned or bouillon cubes. Lately I’ve had to buy a few cans here or there of chicken broth, and I just used the last of my beef stock today in our stew. So right now I am preparing beef bones to be made into a wonderful stock so I can stock my deep freezer again, and the next time we cook a whole chicken I will have enough bones and meaty parts to turn into chicken broth or stock (I’ve been collecting bones and meaty parts in my freezer…).
If you ever make vegetable stocks for soups - save all of your veggie scraps (except on items such as potatoes or brocolli). Your scraps can be used in place of fresh vegetables for this purpose, saving the fresh veggies for a meal you’ll eat and preventing veggie scraps from entering the garbage can (unless you compost!). I hate throwing things into the landfill (when you choose to recycle plastics/metals, take your scrap papers to the paper retriever, and save most of your food scraps, you may be amazed at how little you take the trash out!)
Two articles I found incredibly helpful on HOW and WHY to make healthy, home made broths and stocks are here and here. These are in my homesteading binder and referred to often.
Aside from using fresh broths and stocks, you can easily freeze them, boil them down to create a thickened and condensed version (add water when using in recipes to create your stock again), and even can them. This way you can make a lot at once and have it available when you need it.
Stocks and broths can be made from vegetables, fish, duck, chicken, beef, and lamb. They can be used in soups, stews and casseroles or even on their own as an incredibly healthy drink.
To prepare stocks, you’ll need bones and bits of meat, vegetables and good water. For beef and lamb stocks, bones are browned in the oven to give flavor and color. Refer to the articles linked above for step by step instructions and recipes. Making broth can take a few hours to all night or even 24 hours. But it’s really a simple process.
