Stocking Up On Stock

The sunrises of and early morning skies of late have been stunning. Well worth waking up for. Here are a few of my favorites.

Later today I’ll go to pick up Russell for his Spring Break from Simon’s Rock College. His last text mentioned he had received my most recent Happy Mail packages, thought he’d done well on his Comp Sci midterm, and was looking forward to some much-needed down time from books, papers and exams. Okay it was a text and in reality it was much shorter than that, but since this is a blog and not a text I thought I could take some license and expand what was communicated via the little green bubble.

Over break Russell won’t be going somewhere warm, though it has certainly warmed up around these parts considerably in the past week. Nor will he be doing any mission work, which I’ve noticed from several of my Facebook friends, is apparently the latest way to spend a college holiday. He probably won’t even hit the slopes to take advantage of all the snow we’ve had this winter.

Instead he will be having his wisdom teeth pulled out, what for many Americans has become a seemingly bizarre rite of passage. Both my husband and I did it when we were his age. Many of his friends have had it done. On Monday Russell will lose four more teeth, and trust me when I say the Tooth Fairy will not be stopping by to pay him for these fangs.

The doctor made a few recommendations – pick up the pain medication before you come in for the surgery so you won’t have to sit around at the drug store waiting for a prescription to be filled, and also stock the kitchen with soft foods such as soup, ice cream, puddings. His one iron clad rule was no straws! He said he’s had patients who pulled their own stitches out with a straw and a thick shake. So I have locked the straws away, have bought several pints of ice cream,  and have been making stock instead.

In our house stock almost always means chicken stock. There is usually a block or two of homemade stock in the freezer as well as bags of vegetable scraps and bones ready for the next stock pot. If you don’t know this already stock is the most delicious form of recycling for your food scraps. Every time you peel a carrot or onion, or top and tail a stalk of celery you pop those bits into a bag which then lives in your freezer. Likewise when you roast a chicken all the skin and bones end up living in a bag in the freezer until it’s time to make stock. This isn’t anything fancy – it is peasant stock. Rich and dark and flavorful. The perfect base for any soup. It will always be darker in color than what you will find in a box on the super market shelves. It will taste truer than a bouillon cube dissolved in water. Hopefully the resulting soups will give sustenance as he recovers.

Simple Stock

Carrot peelings

Onion skins

Celery scraps

Parsley stalks (optional)

Chicken or turkey carcass, including skin, fat and bones

I don’t measure anything for my stock, just fill a large pot with vegetable scraps, chicken carcasses (you’ll want at least one carcass and it’s even better if you have two) and water, then simmer for a few hours. Cover the pot and let it sit overnight then strain it the next morning.

After that I let the stock sit in a large bowl in the fridge so the fat rises to the top and solidifies somewhat and can then be scrapped off. If I’m in a hurry I use a fat separator which is one of the best inventions ever (see picture below). I’m an Episcopalian so I call what I strain or scrape off chicken fat, if I were Jewish I’d call it schmaltz. This is not officially what one would call schmaltz, but it’s pretty darn close. If you want to make the real deal click here or ask your Jewish Grandmother how to make it. Anyway back to the stock. Once you’ve de-fatted it you can then either use it immediately or pour into freezer bags and save it for a day when you need some stock.

Now you know it’s that easy.

What’s not so easy is my ability to not  taste test all the ice cream I bought. What can I say? I am weak and therefor will go back to the store before Monday to restock what I gobbled up. At least I can say that it did pass the taste test, so we can be sure of that much.