Homemade Broth / Stock

Using bouillon is a no-no on a low amine diet. I find organic carton broth to be marginally better, but it’s all still been sitting around on a shelf for a long time, collecting amines in my food. Not my favorite. Making your own broth at home is super simple and very economical. I keep (and re-use – yay recycling!) a few bags of scraps in my freezer until I have enough to make whatever kind of broth I’m making.

I typically have several gallon-sized Ziplock bags of “trash” in my freezer at any given time:

Scraps, bones, and fat from lamb, buffalo, and beef
Scraps, bones, and fat from chicken
Shrimp and other mollusk shells, tails, etc. If making fish stock, I acquire bones and scraps and make it same day, and use it same day, as fish grows amines very quickly.
Vegetable bits, including:

carrot tops
onion skins, tops, bottoms (too many onion skins will make it bitter)
ends of parsley
bits of unused potato or beet root
beet tops (if I didn’t cook and eat them)
stemmy or fibrous bits
asparagus stem bottoms
vegetables that haven’t gone bad, but aren’t at their peak and won’t get used
any other low amine vegetable bit or scrap.

When I have a full gallon Ziplock, I’m ready to make stock. I use either a Crockpot, or do it on the stove. Either way works just fine, though stovetop is much faster.

Fill pot/Crockpot with whatever foods from which you’re making stock.
Pour in enough water to cover everything.

Beef broth starting on the stovetop

Making vegetable broth in the Crockpot

Meat broth: Add 1 Tbsp vinegar to the stock. It helps pull calcium and other nutrients out of the bones.
On the stove top, I turn it to high and once boiling, turn to a very low simmer. Cook for at least hours. The longer you cook it, the more it will flavor the broth.
In a Crockpot, I usually run it for two cycles (6 hours each cycle) on high.
Allow to cool.
Meat broth: Skim a majority of the fat and foam off the top (Fat is flavor and as much as America is anti-fat, it’s not bad for you in moderation. No need to be 100% on the skimming). Discard.
Strain into another large pot.
Meat broth: Discard bones. If there is any meat, throw it back in the pot with the stock.
Vegetable broth: Squeeze broth out of remaining vegetable matter. Discard used vegetable scraps.
You can reduce your stock if you’d like, for more compact freezer storage. I just pour it into a new Gallon Ziplock (you don’t want it leaking) and toss it in the freezer as is, since I usually use stock to make large batches of soup.
You can also pour (this is better with a stock that has been at least partially reduced) it into ice cube trays, allow to freeze, and then put the bouillon cubes in a bag, if you want to use the stock in smaller amounts.
Congratulations on being resourceful, healthier, and eating smarter. Enjoy your homemade stock!

47.606209 -122.332071Published in:

on September 25, 2011 at 9:33 am Comments (36)
Tags: bouillon, Broth, Cook, Cooking, recipes, Slow cooker, stock

The URI to TrackBack this entry is: /2011/09/25/broth/trackback/

RSS feed for comments on this post.