Thank you for all the thrifty tips you use. We eat a lot of soups and stews in the winter, too. I've never thought of using the oddball parts of the onions, carrot greens or leek greens. You're never too old or too smart to learn.

I never thought about using the skins etc either but it makes sense. I'll tell you this though, I make stock to use out of all the bits and pieces of meat that I have. When our local markets have great buys on meat, I stock up...chicken breasts this past weekend for 99 cents per pound...so I bought plenty...I took the skin off and cut off the rib sections and tossed them in a stock pot and added a couple of onions, carrots and celery stalks, salt and pepper...and I do that every time with my bits and pieces. I don't know if I will can it or freeze it ...I'll decide tomorrow...I love having my own stock...I cool it in the fridge and then remove the fat to make it "reduced fat"...

I used to keep a vegetable scrap bucket in the freezer too. One thing I found was that too much celery seemed to make it bitter. Also, I liked saving onion skins for color, but I preferred the result with more yellow and limited or no red skins.

Melissa

You all have reminded me of a neighbor many, many years ago in Minnesota. She had a big pot in her BIG freezer that all scraps went into... even leftovers from meals!

Ha Ha and that post reminded me of a girl I knew as an AF wife in Sumter, SC...She had 7 children and every night she cooked a big meal...All of the leftovers went into a large container in her fridge...She separated some of it into bags or bowls or whatever but on Friday night, all of it was hauled out of the fridge and warmed for supper...She said you would think that the kids would hate it but they actually loved it because they all had their favorites to eat and they got to pick and choose...

With 7 kids you get hungry. I know. We had 5 kids and ate the food as fast as possible before it ran out. Mom was a great cook and made huge meals and we chowed it all down. We all loved leftovers.

I too learned new ideas about making stock. I make a lot of stock. I like the ideas presented here. I give all the chicken bones and skins to my golden retriever. He loves them. No waste around here. But I had not used onion skins. Will try it out. sounds like a great idea.

Correction: red onion skins are in fact not good, I agree. You have to have the blond ones. Just because one is thrifty it does not mean one has to get sloppy.

We buy our own cow with other families for the winter, so I am strongly in favor of bones for stock meat. Chicken (we buy our own whole chickens too) has too strong a flavor IMHO. Saturday I stewed a rabbit with cow stock and it was excellent. With the chicken stock all you would have tasted would be the chicken.

My thrifty way of making stock doesn't compare to the large quantities that you have discussed here, but for a family of two, I try to be a thrifty as I can.

I love to buy the pre-baked rottisery (sp?) chickens when they are on sale or marked down. When they don't sell the day they are baked the next day they are chilled and marked down a couple bucks. I buy those and put only one in the fridge to use as a baked chicken and we have mashed potatoes and other sides for the first night. The other chickens go right into the freezer in the wrappings they were purchased in. Lots of folks tell me that this isn't that cheap, but I can get a two- or three-pound chicken for as little as $5 and it is already cooked, saving you the labor and the fuel to cook it. Seems thrifty to me. At DeMoulas, their chickens are about 2 pounds and cost $4. I never see them marked down there.

Later in the week, we can have chicken tacos or enchiladas with the leftover rotissery chicken and then finally if there is any left, that goes on top of a chef's salad. We love fresh salads in this house.

At the very end of the chicken, I throw the carcass in the pot and boil it until I have stock. With that stock I make soup. This works for very small families and the stock from the chicken carcass is still very very flavorful -- I guess from the bones and the leftover solids. I'll be adding blonde onion skins in the future to this stock. If you recall, in the old days they used onion skins as a dye to get yellow.

Anyway, that's my two cents!

I know about making chicken stock from the chicken carcass. Definitely a good way to stretch that rottisery chicken (ya know, I think that is what they do with the chicken that is about to go past it's sell by date, they cook it up and try selling it for another couple of days.)

Anyway, does anyone know much about fish stock? We are raising tilapia and channel catfish in the back yard and we like to grill or smoke the fish and were wondering if there are additional uses we can make of the parts from cleaning other than feeding the chickens (the girls are still learning about how to eat scraps and only eat so much fish parts at any one time. They like the egg sacks though.) I'm not entirely sure that I'm interested in fish stock but a year ago, I wasn't sure I was interested in eating the fish at all so I'm open to ideas.

And about the bit bowl or pot of veggies and stuff in the freezer, what about freezer burn, is that a problem for this practice? How does one go about such things, I'm definitely interested?

tclynx,
I have not kept a stock pot in the freezer, although I think that's a very good idea, but I do keep a soup "bag" in the freezer for my vegetable soup. After ziplock bags came along I just put any left over bits of meat, vegetables etc. in my soup bag , press the air out and there is no freezer burn or ice crystals when I take it out. I don't see why a larger bag wouldn't work for the stock as well.
jude

I considered myself way past thrifty, but thanks for this info. I think now I can do considerably better. We've used Ruthie's friend's tactic -- called the microwave suppers for Sunday nights. Spread the counter with all the bits and scraps and Voila! Supper. Extra veggies go into a tub in the freezer and we have soup when it's full. One time I tossed a couple of Brussels sprouts in and wondered how welcome they would be in the soup, but DH said they were a great addition. (Faint!)

I just put three bags of chicken stock in the greezer. I thought I might can it but I did some other kitchen chores and I am about worn out. With this cancer, I only have just so much strength for the day and I have to take a rest....do a chore...rest...do another chore...and rest again. I am at the moment resting. I cleaned the inside of the fridge...what a mess, rearranged and cleaned out one big cabinet area and did breakfast and loaded the dishwasher....not my sink is full of jars and plastic containers from the fridge from stuff I threw away...Anyway back to the stock..I out it in plastic bags...and laid it down flat to freeze...that's just free stock from cleaning up the chicken breasts.

Uhhhhhhh you all know that I meant freezer not greezer...right ..

Freezer burn does not matter for stuff that goes into stock. Possibly, freezing stuff is better than using the unfrozen veggie, same reason why wine with frozen grapes is more intense than regular. The freezing process breaks cells and the stuff yields more juice when boiling.

Re: fish stock. Fish stock made with assorted saltwater shellfish and trash fish is excellent, possibly the best stock there is. But you will have to try on your own with catfish and tilapia. No need to be fancy. Gut them (chickens love fish guts), filet them, and what is left (head, spine, skin, bits of meat sticking to the spine and ribs) is enough. You may add veggies of course.

glib,

Great post! I used to save lots of veggie scraps for stock (and avoid the same ones as you) following suggestions from Moosewood Cookbook (some of you may laugh, but hey, I'm an urban girl with a working mom who didn't learn these tricks in a farm kitchen). I had got out of the habit when I had very little room but now we've an upright freezer and I should get back into it. It made me feel so thrifty to use a veggie three times --- once for the veg, once for the ends & peels in the stock, and then once into the composter (my answer to chickens....).

I make chicken and turkey stock from carcasses, too; I never consider it too strong for soups and stews, but it is DEFINITELY much stronger than store-bought, so I treat it like a concentrate and usually dilute it with water when cooking. I freeze some in 1- or 2-cup portions (small family like debra --- btw I love your story of the rotisserie chickens!) but soem in muffin tins so I end up with 1/3-cup "pucks" that I pop out and into a ziplock and can use to add a little extra flavour to even a small pot of something.

Just today for lunch, I had made some sandwiches with leftover meatloaf, and decided a little soup would go well with them. I had an open one-cup jar of Annie's salsa, which I dumped into a pot, and added a cup of leftover white beans from the other day. Added a chicken stock "puck" and a squirt of lemon, and presto, a cup of soup each for me and DH!

Z

Last post: I am thrifty, but not particularly. Leek and carrot greens *are* better pot greens than anything you can find in stores. Onion skins *are* better than onions. As a matter of fact, I worked in France for a while, and there onion soup is made with skins, and they sell carrot greens in markets precisely for stock making (I asked the sellers). Quite a mind opening experience. The rest I tried on my own.

I remember back in the 40's and 50's. My mom had three different dinners for Friday night, when she cleaned out the refrigerator. She would cut up all the meat and vegetable scraps and make a sauce. Sometimes she served it on noodles and called it goulash. When served on rice, it was Chinese. Other times she just made up a big pot of soup. Who knows what was in this food? We were growing kids and we were always hungry, it tasted great to us.

caavonldy,
Your comment about "who knows what was in this food?" really makes me remember how my mom tried to use up left overs. But My mom marches to her own drummer and she would put the random stuff into the waffle batter. Stuff like the last dregs from the cereal box that no one will eat or throw away, yogurt just before it needed throwing out, and random left over veggies. Now green waffles with orange bits are something I've never heard of anywhere else.

We are definitely gonna try carrot greens and onion skins for soup stock. We also have some Elephant Garlic (actually a garlic flavored leek) growing and using the greens for stock sounds great.

What about using onion and garlic greens in stock? The other half loves to pick the green onions for use in the kitchen, should we be saving the very top parts of the greens for stock?

Oh I saw mention of juicing carrots, I've heard that the pulp left over from juicing carrots is good for making carrot cake or carrot bread.

Chicken stock puck, what a great idea. I bought 2 chickens yesterday for 69 cents a pound and cooked them, shredded and put in the food saver. Broth was put in quart jars in the freezer but I'm defrosting one jar and making pucks.

I, too, make my own stock. However, I'm curious about onion skins in particular and the trimmings of vegetables in general: Do you wash the onion, skin and all first? What about the rest of the "leftovers" -i.e. ends of celery, etc. Do you wash these thoroughly? Some of it seems a bit dirty to put into food. Thoughts?

Also, I thought some of you might enjoy a website I find fascinating. It's focus is nutrition but there are several articles on homemade stock/broth that I've found to be fun reading and packed with great information as well. I'm trying to make some changes to our diet/health (I said SOME -who can change a whole lifestyle!) and one of the ways I've done this is to make sure that there is always homemade stock in the freezer. I often used it for braising vegetables in the winter for a delicious was to eat them as well as to boost the nutritional value.

Here is the website: (this links to one of the articles re: broth/stock but there are several on the site.)

http://www.westonaprice.org/foodfeatures/broth.html

I keep a two gallon ziplock bag in my freezer, and I put all the chicken carcasses in there, also any trimmings I take off from whole chickens, like tails and wing tips. I make a roast chicken about once a week for dinner, it is one of my favorite meals. Also carrot, onion, and celery scraps. When the bag is full I make the stock and pressure can it into pints. (no room in the freezer for all the stock I make)

I was doing quarts for a while but found that I usually only need a pint. One cup rice to one pint stock makes lovely flavored rice.

Another article about whole veggie usage, by high level restaurateurs. I did not know only about the fennel stems

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/15/FDF615KGGK.DTL

Great ideas does anyone use a pressure cooker to cook down the stock it looks like it would be a lot faster
I may try it when I get enough scraps saved

Thanks for the original post glib! I knew about some of them but I did not know about the blond onion skins. I will do that.

I have read that carrot tops are slightly toxic, but some people do eat them. If they were sold at markets to make stock they must be ok. Anyone has heard that about carrot tops? I grow carrots and I would love to find a use for the tops (other than my compost pile)

Here are two items that also go well in stock and have not been mentioned yet:

mushroom stems. When I rehydrate dried shitake mushrooms I save the hard stems in a bag and use for stock. I also save the rehydrating water sometimes.

Corn cobs. When you take the kernels off (for some recipes) and you are left with the cob of fresh corn, freeze an use them for stock. Really good, it gives it a sweet hearty flavor and a golden color.

We make a great stock with shrimp skins - and I must give credit to Emeril Lagasi. I know that is where we got the recipe, but don't recall the exact proportions.

We save the shrimp skins in the freezer until we have a quart bag about half-full when tightly packed. (we eat a lot of shrimp) The skins are combined with carrots, onion, garlic, salt and sometimes a touch of ginger. Add 4-5 quarts of water, depending on how many skins we have and boil it down for an hour. Great for shrimp or chicken dishes like etouffee or gumbo. And fantastic in Asian style meals.

I generally feed my scraps to the girls in the hen house, but I can see where the bag would get full pretty fast, and I don't guess the hens would mind if they were cooked a bit.

Kay

For the shrimp, add a dash of the 'Old Bay' spice as well as a couple of bay leaves. The boiling spices used are mustard seed, dill, corander, peppercorns, a little allspice and clove too. as well as a few red pepper flakes. These get fished out once you have cooked the shrimps. I keep the shells and simmer with the spices and then strain it, add sea salt and the peeled raw shrimp. Once in a while I make a seafood casserole using shrimp and scallops with a buttery cracker crumb stufffing mixed with some garlic. Its baked and is really good too. One of my favorites is shrimp Pad Tai noodles.

I make and can my poultry, beef, seafood stock. I have 4 freezers, so I stash all carcass, bones, meat scraps in the same area. Everything is labled.

I don't save alot of veggie scraps as they are composted. But I do dehydrate alot of veggies, incuding celery ends and carrot ends. Those are labled and stored for stock. They take up little space in the pantry and their flavor is intense after dehydration.

Making a good stock is a labor of love :-)

First of all, I have never made chicken stock. shame, shame. I have, as we speak, the carcass of a rotisserie chicken that I want to use for stock (trying to do the right thing here). Surely the greasy skin throws away, right? Now, how do you know how much liquid to add to the pot to boil the carcass? Is there other pertinent information I should know? You all are so good to come to the rescue of old idiots.

jude

Oh my goodness Jude, don't throw away that "greasy" skin - it will lend quite a bit of flavor to your stock!

Break down your carcass as much as you can, so it is more space-efficient. Add your veggies, a bay leaf, a couple of peppercorns and enough water to cover them all. Bring it to a boil then simmer it for a couple of hours. Let it cook a bit, then stain it (I start with a colander, then move to a very fine mesh strainer, then filter through cloth). Cool it down, chill in the fridge until the fat hardens on the top, then lift the fat off and discard it. At this point I heat it up, add salt to taste and can it.

Sometimes I will take the solids that have been strained out, and add more water for a second, lighter batch that will be used for soup. How's that for squeezing a nickle until the buffalo poops?

Why Robin, you have saved my life! I have put everything in the fridge and I'll deal with it tomorrow. I have a ziplock in the freezer that has trimmings off veggies, onion skins etc. Can I just add some carrots, maybe a little celery, the bay leaf and peppercorns to that or do I need to add something else. I picked up the idea for the onion skins etc. from another thread. I'm trying my best to learn to do new things. I'll probably do the soup pucks in the freezer like Zabby. I like that idea .....kinda like I do my pesto when I make it.

Thank you again, sweet Robin. I appreciate!

jude

You can use just about anything, and trial and error will determine your personal preferences. Onions and onion skins are classic, and I am a personal fan of the tough tops from leeks. I'll be trying carrot tops next time, since my carrots are getting big enough to snitch some tops from now. I save tough asparagus ends, too, although I wouldn't use those all the time. I avoid cruciferous veggies, as cabbage-relatives (incl. broccoli) tend to make for cabbagy-smelling stock, although a little bit can be good. No two batches of stock are exactly identical, and I like that.

The up side is that if you somehow make a batch you really don't like, you aren't out that much. Toss it and try again. :-)

Let me swing in here with a contrary p.o.v. - one of the features of the diminishing david52 taste buds is their ability to rather quickly tell good stock apart from not-so-good stock. So, if I want to make beef stock, I'll wait until they have 7 blade chuck on sale, roast it, and make stock. I'll simmer that, then add onions cut in half, carrots cut lengthwise, celery, maybe some garlic, then pepper corns, a bit of coriander seeds, and then simmer until it smells really good, strain, and I'll end up with a dozen quarts of excellent, concentrated stock, costing about $10.

Chicken, I'll buy the boned thigh meat on sale, and proceed much the same. I don't get that 'chicken bone taste'.

Fish - I use whiting fillets, which we can get for about $2 a lb in season, white wine, etc. This gets used mostly for sauces.

It doesn't cost that much, and using fresh garden veggies from your own garden - rinse, chop, and add, is a huge boost in quality. The difference in the result is remarkable, at least for me.

Signed, stock snob.

To say I'm excited would be an understatement. I have 3 lovely quarts of stock in the fridge, chilling, so I can lift the fat off, then I think I'll do at least 1 quart in "soup pucks" and the rest in pint zip locks.

Thanks to all of you for your advice/tips...now I just have to think how I'm going to use my treasure.

jude

After re-reading this thread I got all inspired to make stock too. I am still somewhat hesitant about the carrot tops though. I will goggle it again, I have so many carrots (and tops) that it would be such a good use. Lots of yellow onions too.

I had missed Zabby's muffin tin freezing idea. I love it, as I freeze in quarts but sometime this is too much quantity.

jude31, traditional uses for chicken stock are gumbo, paella, risotto, many types of soups.

It worked! So I added carrot tops and onions skins for the first time, and I love it. I also added the central part of the cauliflower plant (not the leaves) after we harvested the cauliflower (curds). I have other plans for the leaves and I was afraid the flavour would overpower. That was a first too and no flavor overpowered. The onion skins gave it a wonderful golden color that I had not achieved before.

I love the taste, delicate and well balanced, no veggie overpowers the others. I have it cooling down and got out my muffin tins. This is what I put in:

2 onions and the onions skins, quartered

carrot tops for 6 carrots, roots from 2 carrots

1 celery plant that flowered (part of it)

5 bay leaves

some dried oregano

salt and crushed black pepper

central portion of 3 cauliflower plants, cut in pieces

1 head of garlic cut down the middle across the cloves, leaving the skins

about 1 1/2 cups frozen mushroom stems

about 1 cup of grilled pepper juice (the juice that comes out after you grill a bunch of peppers, cover, steam and peel).

That's it. Obviously this is a vegetable stock. I was out of frozen corn cobs and completely forgot about the potato, but I would have added those as well. Sometimes I add a tomato or two as well.

One of the tastiest batches of stock I've made lately was "meat and mushroom" stock, made with random meat bones and scraps (no poultry, but beef, pork and possibly some lamb - plate bones and scraps from steaks, chops, etc.) and the frozen stems from trimming up crimini/portobella mushrooms, and onion.

I've also made veggie stock from frozen veggies that have been in the freezer too long... :-)

I have some very old veggies in the freezer that I can't throw out and haven't used and I am not sure I will ever use at this point. I LOVE the idea of "cleaning out my freezer" and making a pot of stock. What a fantastic idea!!! I learn something new every few posts.

Thank you!!!
Teri

I put 23 ducks into the freezer last night, the pig went to slaughter last week and I have beef that will be ready about October. I definitely had to clean out my freezer.

When I make stock I never peel onions, I just cut them into quarters and toss 'em in and I always use the celery tops for stock, as well as the carrot peels. I have a lot of scraps in the freezer and that's going to translate into canned beef and chicken stock by this weekend.

I'm very thrifty, and I learned it from Grandma. I never thought of carrot tops, though, only the peels.

Annie

After reading this post, I decided to try saving carrot tops, celery, lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, etc., for making vegetable stock. It turned out great.

However, I took it one step further, and after draining all of the veggies, I took the dregs, (looked like seaweed) and dehydrated it. Then, after drying, it crumbled up and made the BEST tasting seasoning I've ever tasted. Honest.

Sooo - don't throw away the best part - the result will amaze you. I used some to top off my sourdough bread recently, giving it a spicy touch, that set it apart from the usual loaf. It is also great added to an egg wash for deep fried foods - for a special spicy flavoring.

Great stuff.

Bejay

Aren't we getting creative!

Ken -

Heh heh - it's nice to improve on "perfection" - don't you agree?

Bejay

Sure. Thats why I like to make my stuff using my methods. Recipes for the most part are for those who want an uncontrollable canned product, and sometimes recipes for some are not well suited for others. I go by invention, taste, logic, thought, experience, and planning when I make canned stuff, so the same items are never really the exact same thing, and I always taste things before commiting them to canning jars. Same holds true for sausage making. I mix in spices, and cook up a tiny amount to taste and see if it needs any further additions before I stuff the sausages.

LOVED this thread, if it wasn'tfor the fact my parents are dead, I wold have thought it was them writing it, my mum used to put all types of "waste" into stock and I do the same, I hate reading receipy that call on you to use the "good stuff", then discard it such as a lot of stock/soup receipy have!
I am in family of 4 and we rarely buy the cooked chilcken in store, but we do buy raw, Sunday roasted, I remove the legs as none of us like them, giblets on to boil with carrot and onion peel (sometimes I save the livers by freezing until I have enough for pate) after it is cooked me take the fleshy part and give to our cats.
I use the gilbet juice and chicken juice to make gravy.
whilst the chicken is cooking I put on my slow cooker and toss in the chicken legs, with storks of brocoli, carrot & onion peel outer leaves from cauli or cabbage.
after the meal
chicken striped and bones added to slow cooker. Sunday tea is chicken sandwiches, toms and chips.
monday is Monday pie! this is not really a pie it just the chicken in white sauce and left over veg.
also sandwiches for hubby
tuesday is another roast this time just sliced meat reheated in gravey in the oven (stove) VEG GALORE!
MORE SANDWICHES FOR HUBBY!
Wednesday, maybe enough for sandwiches, but the soup phase arrives! from the freezer! IT IS SO EASY!
I am not as you can tell vegaterian, and never will be, but I can not tell you how much it annoys me to waste meat!
so I am frugal with it and I let my children know! I cried the day they opened the fridge just as we where going out last summer as meat was ruined, it wasn't the cost, it was the fact, that I try to get them to understand, an animal died so you can eat don't waste it, don't increas the numbers! I worked on farms and have seen slaughter, I have killed a chicken and a rabbit, not put me off eating them but made me look very hard at my useage of them.
My boys are 4 ane my hubby get upset when they ask whats this and I say "its a pig/chicken/cow/lamb" ect
but honesty is the best policy I think and if they want to be vegaterian I will support them whole heartedly, but I personal like meat, but will never waste it if I can help it.

All of these great ideas for stock are creating a dilemna for me. Do I save the leftover veggies for stock or compost? I'm into making good compost too. Question...if I save the leftovers for stock do you strain the stock and only freeze/can the broth? Because then I can put the strainings into the compost and they will already be pretty much broken down for the worms. Hope you all get a good laugh out of this.

Sure can. The stock is usually just that, with no solids in it. So you can dump the cooked waste into the compost pile

I do what ken does, I do wash it!due to the fats ect from the chicken, and make sure any bones and chicken are removed, any chicken bits I put back into the stock, and frozen, its a bit fiddly, but for me its double bubble for my waste.