Save money#6 make stock

 This is a bit of an experiment since I've never done this before. But I was inspired to do this when I saw a video about environmentalism and a person said she saved her kitchen scraps to make stock. This was from a zerowaste perspective but it works equally well for frugal people. Not that stock is that expensive but still. 

So before I begin I should say that I've never made stock before. I know my sister tried to do chicken stock once and ended up throwing it all away so I'm not super confident. I decided to try it. 

Looking through my big cookbook I actually found a recipe for vegetable stock. So rather than look for another I used that. The recipe assumes using whole vegetables rather than scraps but well see. 

For a while I have been gathering scraps like carrot and parsnips peels, leaves from cauliflower, onion and other things. This was the work of a few weeks so I put it in boxes in the freezer and slowly filled them. 

Cooking

I'm not going to include the recipe here because it's not my recipe and I'm sure there are plenty you can find. But it was basically put vegetables and salt in pot add water, boil then let simmer. Finally run it through a sieve. To make it more flavorful I threw in some oregano. I have some growing (dying) in the window so the wilted pieces went in as well.

At this point I realized I have nothing to store it in except some glass jars which is less than ideal for freezing. I did worry that the jars would break when it froze but I also wasn't sure it would last in the fridge. I tried to not fill them completely and luckily they didn't crack. 

Results

I'll admit this takes some time both to gather the scraps and to cook the stock. I'm currently at a point where I work from home and so have time to keep an eye at a pot that need to simmer for a few hours. 

I've used it in a few things since then some couscous and a soup. It's worked well though it is less salty than stock-cubes and it is less versatile so ill still be using them but this was I fun little experiment and I'm already starting to gather scraps for the next batch.