Save Your Bones

Homemade soups are deliciously rich and silky when you use bone stock. There is nothing like the mouthfeel and flavor of gravy made with natural gelatin from bones. If you take the time to make a large amount of bone stock once from scratch and store it, then making several awesome soups later goes much quicker. Because you don’t have to build soup from boiling ingredients in plain water every single time.

Basically:  start stockpiling your bones in freezer containers. Doesn’t matter if they are cooked or raw, just separate them by creature, crack them up a bit to make them smaller, and keep storing them up until you have enough to fill a large stockpot or crockpot. When I say ‘bones’ I also mean any tough sinew or cartilage, wingtips, or other clean discards from a carcass. Go on ahead and add any pan drippings from a fresh roast or chicken to your collection. That is all gelatin too and the baked-brown flavor will enrich the broth.

You can also add chicken giblets to the chicken pile, and pork skin to the pork pile. I usually remove the chicken kidneys and feed them to the dog, because I do not like the flavor of kidneys. The livers however eventually get liquefied into the stock because they give it an even richer flavor.
When you have accumulated enough bones, go on ahead and fill that stock pot, add a few stalks of celery, a teaspoon of whole black peppercorns, a coarsely chunked whole onion, a couple of bay leaves, and maybe some short branches of rosemary or thyme. Add enough water to just barely cover the bones and herbs, put a tight lid on, and heat to boiling. As soon as you get to the boil, back the heat down to a bare simmer and let it set there for at least six hours  (overnight if you’re using an electric crockpot on super-low), beating up the softened bones periodically to see if any will crack more and spill more goodies.

When most of the connective tissue and cartilage appear to have melted into the broth, or you’ve run out of patience, remove the bones with tongs or a slotted spoon and discard. Strain the broth through a fine mesh to remove the herbs.

(I usually leave the fat floating on top and let it go on ahead into the meals that I make with the stock. Once in a while, with beef stock, I chill the whole pot and remove the disk of white beef tallow floating on top. I freeze this separately. Pieces of it get cracked off over time, and used as the fat for frying eggs on Sunday mornings. Frickin’ delicious.)

Now you have 1/2 a big pot of plain stock to play with. Whatever you aren’t using right away, divide into pints and quarts and freeze. It’s useful stuff to have around for later, loaded with healthy minerals, and tastes a lot better than salty broth out of a can.

Things to do with stock:

* The obvious, slow-simmer some meats and veg and herbs in it and make soup. WONDERFUL soup.

* Reduce it a bit over medium heat, add a thickener like some mashed starchy vegetable (I use a combination of sweet potato and yuca), and transform it into a thicker gravy base for making stews and pot-pie fillings.

Chicken stew with linguica.

* Place a pint or more of bone stock in a small saucepan, bring to a simmer with the lid askew, and allow it to reduce to less than one-quarter the original volume. Freeze the concentrated stock in an ice cube tray, store the cubes in a freezer bag, and use as you would bouillon.

* Try this: take a couple-three of your frozen homemade bouillon cubes, and melt in a frying pan with a couple generous  splashes of dry sherry and a few grinds of pepper. Bubble over medium heat a few minutes, stirring constantly, and reduce down to a thinnish syrupy consistency. Add a small knob of butter and whisk quickly to make a sauce. Toss quickly with hot steamed vegetables, or spoon over steaks.

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