Stocks and broths

Flavor your stuff. WIP as I add more here … 😊

You can follow much better, more detailed and consistent recipes instead. These use up kitchen scraps in a tasty way to minimize food waste.

All of these are for about 6 cups of water, simmered to 4 cups or so once strained. It’s assumed the ingredients are stored frozen over several weeks to build up the right amount.

Cheese rinds

• 8 oz. cheese rinds from hard cheese (eg, parmesan)

Very important to keep stirring this constantly. Otherwise, the melted cheese will stick to the bottom of the pot and burn. This’ll ruin the batch and turn into a nightmare to clean.

Use in bread dough, risotto, soup, or polenta.

Corn cob

• 4-6 cobs of corn, kernels removed
• a pinch or two of black pepper

Goes great in cornbread, grits, posole, or soups/chowder that includes sweet corn.

Mushrooms

• 1 quart-sized freezer bag full of mushroom stems
• a splash of dry sherry (optional)

Use in risotto and soups.

Veggie

• 2 parts mushroom stems
• 2 parts onion bits (not the paper)
• 1 part carrot bits (ends, tops, skin, etc)
• 1 part other mixed veggies (bell pepper tops, celery ends, leek trimmings, etc)
• 0.5 to 1 part garlic bits
• 0.5 to 1 part fresh herb stems and other trimmings
• 2-4 tbsp tomato paste (to taste)
• A quarter cup or so of white wine (to taste)
• Water to cover

The amount of water should probably be about 6 cups if the veggie scraps are about 12-ish cups in total. Adjust as needed to clean the scraps out of your fridge.