Making Soup Stock Is Economical & Easy

 

Whenever I prepare vegetables I save my scraps and keep them in a gallon size Ziploc bag in my freezer.  Onions skins, carrot peels and the ends of those carrots, parsley stems, celery trimmings,  cabbage cores, etc., it all goes into the bag.  Sometimes I'll have bones or chicken carcasses leftover from a meal too and I will place those into a bag and freeze them for making broth as well.

 

The other day I took out my very full bag of vegetable scraps and some saved pork bones and placed them in my largest slow cooker.  I added some dried herbs and peppercorns from my spice cabinet and filled it up with water.  I let it cook on high for six hours until I had rendered all of that goodness from the bones and vegetable scraps.  I allowed it to cool for a while and then strained the broth into a large bowl.  It looked and smelled delicious.

 

The strained broth was divided up into plastic freezer containers, labeled and placed into the freezer to be used in recipes later on.  Anytime I have a recipe that calls for broth or if I want to make soup I'm all set.  The best thing about making your own broth is that you know exactly what is in it.  The best thing about making broth this way is that it is practically free, made out of things most people would have just tossed into the trash.  With the rising costs of groceries right now I'm not willing to waste anything.  And if I don't have to spend my money on purchasing a carton or can of broth, even better.