The Weekly Waste Word: Making Stock

I try to eat as much of the food I buy as possible. I plan out meals before I shop, save leftovers and compost whatever’s left. But until recently, I hadn’t made stock from leftover veggies or bones. To put my money where my mouth is, I set out to make chicken stock.  

In my mind, making stock seemed like the final frontier in food efficiency. Kind of like Native Americans using all of the buffalo, only a lot smaller.

The basics are easy enough–toss everything in a pot and let it simmer. Then I turned to this helpful page to answer the questions that remained.

One such question was whether to call it stock or broth. Using the above site as a guide, I boiled it down to this difference: stock takes three hours longer.

Whatever we’re calling it, I threw in some carrot peels, past-its-prime cabbage and the celery parts that I normally compost. About three hours later, the house smelled like chicken soup and I had about 6 cups of broth.

Now, the next time I say I’ve made a homemade soup, I’ll mean all of it.