It’s hard to believe we’re already in our 5th week of our first year as Creekside CSA members! For the past 5 weeks, I’ve been tossing vegetable scraps into freezer bags for a “future stock”. Only using the whites of the scallions? The greens went into the bag. Extra swiss chard stalks? Into the bag. Half a garlic scape unused? ….You get the idea. I decided today was the perfect “future” day to try out a vegetable stock.
If I had to guess, I’d say this veggie mix included some asparagus stalks, some beet green stems, broccoli stalks, garlic scape pieces, scallion greens, swiss chard stalks, and possibly a pak choy core. In other words: it didn’t really matter to me what vegetables I threw in! There was also some tomato pulp from the juicer (not Creekside CSA tomatoes, but I did buy the tomatoes from Creekside’s stand), and I added 1/2 a leftover red onion (from *gasp* the grocery store.) ;) Finally, I sprinkled in some of my favorite spices and herbs for stocks: dried thyme, dried parsley, black peppercorns, and coriander seeds. There would have been a bay leaf, but my bay leaf jar was empty (oops).
Bonus: it kind of looks like a magic potion or science experiment. I’m certain that kids would think this was pretty neat (that is, if they weren’t thinking about eating all those vegetables). :) I’m also VERY certain that I should have used a bigger pot. Nothing boiled over, but I did have to check in on the pot and stir it every so often to be safe.
I ended up adding 4 quarts of water because I wanted 4 quarts of stock. I’ll freeze 3 quarts of the stock and use some of the other quart in a soup for lunch tomorrow. It simmered for somewhere between 45 min. and 1 hour. Clearly, this wasn’t a very calculated experiment!
The verdict: it’s not a very pretty color, is it?? It’s good, though! I left it unsalted – not so much for health reasons as for the fact that I’d rather control the amount of salt in the rest of whatever recipe I’m using. Let’s face it – this stuff is going into things like soup, stew, sauce, maybe risotto… I’m not going to be eating a quart of vegetable stock all by itself. I can add salt later.
I’m not sure what a quart of vegetable stock costs in the grocery store, but I’ll have to check next time I’m there. Regardless, this is essentially free if you consider that I would have thrown these scraps away if I didn’t use them for this.
Anyone have a favorite use for vegetable stock that you’d like to share? Leave me a comment and maybe I’ll try it!
csa 4 dinner 