Stock Tips: How to Turn All Your Scraps Into Delicious Broth! (2024)

FAQs

Stock Tips: How to Turn All Your Scraps Into Delicious Broth!? ›

Some tips for making your stock more delicious: Try roasting or sautéeing your vegetables ahead of time to deepen their flavor. If you're using meat, save the bones/meat scraps from your roast chicken or choose cuts like shanks and oxtails as they are cheaper and make for a more flavorful stock with more body.

"Ground paprika, turmeric, nutmeg, ground ginger, and other powdered spices add a touch of color and spiciness to broths," she says. As a general rule, use fresh herbs at or near the end of cooking and dried herbs and spices early on. This helps you get the flavors you're looking for in the right balance.

Steer clear of any member of the brassica family; broccoli, cauliflower, kale and cabbage among others. These will ruin your stock with a sulphurous and bitter flavour. Softer vegetables such as potatoes or pumpkin are no good as they break down too easily, creating a cloudy stock.

Saving Vegetable Scraps for Stock

Vegetables that add sweetness include carrots, parsnips, golden beets, fennel, corn cobs, pea pods, and leftovers of previously roasted vegetables. Vegetables that contribute savory bass notes include onions, leek tops, mushroom stems, spinach, chard, squash peels.

Woody herbs like rosemary, thyme, oregano, sage, tarragon, and marjoram release tons of flavor as they slowly simmer in stock. Give them a rinse and toss in a big handful of sprigs per quart of store-bought stock.

Basic Ingredients. Stocks are prepared with a few basic ingredients including bones, mirepoix, herbs and spices, and sometimes tomatoes or wine. They are often prepared using leftover ingredients as a cost-effective measure for the kitchen.

NOTE: Avoid cruciferous veggies like cabbage or brussels sprouts as they can result in a bitter stock. Other fun ingredients to add: Fresh herbs like thyme and parsley are lovely in stock but be careful of intense/woody herbs like rosemary as they can overpower it.

What must you not do when cooking stock? ›

Um, as you're cooking with stock, the the vegetable, the vegetables will release the nutrients and the flavor into the water and what you're left, um, what you're left to it is just kind of a mushy vegetable. It doesn't have a lot of taste.

It turns out that there's a ton of flavor in the papery outer layers of onions, and same for garlic. The skins on both alliums are unpleasant to eat, as well as possibly a choking hazard, but they're absolutely wonderful for infusing flavor into soups, sauces, and stock.

Then, to give the broth even more depth of flavor, I add salt, whole peppercorns, leek tops, and bay leaves. In the second method, I use vegetable scraps instead of the vegetables themselves. This method keeps these veggie odds and ends from going to waste, and it yields a super tasty broth.

A good stock isn't done until it's been strained, seasoned and cooled. Skimping on any of these steps can leave you with stock that's murky, bland or stale-tasting. To strain, pour the stock into a colander lined with at least two layers of cheesecloth.

Some vegetables just don't taste great in a stock! Cruciferous vegetables will get funky tasting, and seemingly mild vegetables like zucchini, green beans, and bell peppers can get bitter if simmered for too long. Ultimately, if it doesn't add, it subtracts! This is my rule of thumb for most recipes.

Some lesser known flavors to add to your bone broth are roasted garlic, a squeeze of lemon, thai curry paste and apple cider vinegar. Another one of my favorites. Roast garlic with oil, salt and pepper in foil in the oven until very soft.