Experimenting with broth, buillon and stock. If you don't do it, the food industry will!

cook it

How do you think broth, bouillon and stock are made? The answer is - food scraps! Companies sell us our own food scraps back with a mark-up. Here is how to make your own:

first: Collect your food scraps during your meal preparations and freeze them to keep them fresh until you get around to cooking a batch of broth. I know this feels weird at first, but just do it! It’ll become a habit after a while. Scraps that work well and should be the basis for any broth are:

• onion peels or leek peels and stems
• stems and peels of celery or celery root
• stems and peels of carrots and other root vegetable

These three give you a base flavor profile to build upon. Now you can add more variation to your base vegetables:

• Make your broth more hearty by adding bones, skin and scraps of fat from your meat of choice.
• Use the shells of prawns or shrimp, fish bones and other sea food to add a rich, but delicate flavor.
• For a more earthy flavor, add scraps from different mushrooms or beets, stems of herbs, as well as the green you find on your carrots or other root vegetables.
• By adding some scraps from tomatoes, bell pepper, garlic or zucchini, you will end up with a more Mediterranean flavor profile.
• If you enjoy making your own Thai curry, you may also have some ginger peels, chili and lemon grass stems left over to add to your broth.
• And lastly, and wine or other spirits you may have left over might also be used to elevate the taste of your broth.

Depending on your cooking style, your broth will match in flavor. Neat!

second: Once you have enough scraps to fill a pot (or too many scraps to keep conveniently in your freezer) it’s time to start cooking! Pick any time that works for you - after dinner, Sunday morning, in between tasks - it only takes a few minutes to set up. Depending on your food scraps the cooking process can be a little bit different, but you will always need a big pot and something to pour your finished broth into afterwards. This could be a second pot, some big bowls, whatever works for you.

Fish and sea food: Use a bit of oil in your pot and heat it. Add the frozen scraps, veggies first, then the fish or seafood leftovers. Only cook it for a minute or two on medium heat, we don’t want it to be seared and develop color. Now, add water (and a splash of white wine if you have some left over) just until everything is covered. Let it simmer for 10 minutes.

Bone broth: Add everything into the pot and add cold water until it’s just covered. Put it on medium heat until it comes to a boil, then put it on low heat and let it simmer for 2-3 hours. I know it’s a long time, but trust me, it takes a while to get all the flavor out. If you feel fancy, you can skim the foam from the broth that develops during the cooking. This will make sure you end up with a clear end product. There is also a layer of fat forming on top of the broth. This can be removed more easily later, when your bone broth is done and has cooled down. The fat builds a solid layer on top of the broth, which you can just take off, so don’t bother trying to skim it now.

Vegetable stock: Add everything into the pot and add cold water until it’s just covered. Put it on medium heat until it comes to a boil, then put it on low heat and let it simmer for 1 hour. Vegetables take less time to cook and give off their flavor a bit quicker than bones and meat, but don’t worry if you end up cooking your vegetables a little bit longer.

Optional: Add spices depending on your taste, from anise, bay leaf and parsley to pepper, juniper berry and lovage. Or add a spoon of tomato paste depending on the flavor profile you are going for.

third: Finally, let’s strain and store our broth. To strain it, you can use a combination of a large sieve and a fresh, clean dish towel and pour everything through into a pot (or bowl). Another option is to use the lid to hold the food scraps back while pouring the liquid through a fine sieve into a new pot.

I recommend to let it cool down a bit first before storing it. Usually I let my broth sit in the pot for another hour or two after cooking. Storage depends on your meal plans and preferences. I like to freeze most of my broth in smaller containers which I can bring out whenever I need some stock. When I have a specific recipe in mind already, I keep some in the fridge, too. Here is keeps for up to a week.

final thoughts: Some food scraps may not be suitable to make broth. I don’t recommend using scraps from cucumber or salad, because it does not add any flavor. I avoid scraps from legumes and cruciferous vegetables like cabbage, broccoli or cauliflower, because they can cause bloating. Don’t use the peels from potatoes, pumpkin scraps, sweet potatoes, yam and other starchy vegetables, which will give off a lot of starch into the water and may change the consistency of the stock.