imafan26
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How to make your own stock?

I have been using canned chicken broth and stocks and bouillon cubes forever. However, they often contain too much salt. I have diluted the stocks by adding more water and used only part of the bouillon to try to reduce the salt. It also reduces the flavor unfortunately. I just used my last container of low sodium broth 40 mg of salt/serving. I went shopping and not only has the price of stock quadrupled, the sodium content is very high even in the stocks.

I have been reading up on stock making and it does not sound that hard to do. Just time consuming.

The best notes said:
to use an old hen for more flavor. Fry or roast the chicken and vegetables before adding to pot. If using other bones, then roasting improves flavor but will get a darker stock. Cut bones to release marrow. Smoked hocks or turkey wing for ham and bean soups.
Cooking time 6-10 hours at a simmer.
Skim off the impurities
Put the vegetables in only during the last hour. Overcooked vegetables are not a good thing
Onions - skins are o.k. Vegetables - Peel or not?
Low sodium = omit the salt (add to taste depending on the recipe) Use kosher salt and then can use half the amount
Western stock + veggies carrots, onions with skin, ends are cut, celery. Spices peppercorns, bay leaf, parsley, thyme
Asian stock= garlic, cilantro, daikon, ginger, lemon grass tops, white peppercorn, green onions
Vegetable stock= onion, celery, peppercorn, thyme, parsley, carrots. Other options: leeks, fennel, mushroom stems, and tomato paste
Strain though a fine sieve or cheesecloth.
Avoid: potatoes, turnips, zucchini, beans , cabbage = cloudy and bitter.
Vegetables should not be cooked more than 1 hour = overcooked vegetables release more sulfur compounds
Asian stocks and western stocks are not interchangeable.

Most of the recipes except the one from CIA specified that a stewing hen would make better stock. Other recipes used roasted chicken bones and organs. Some recipes put the vegetables with the meat (no roasting or frying first) and cooked for a long time.

What is your favorite recipe that has a rich flavor and will be rich enough to leave the salt out or maybe a salt substitute?

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rainbowgardener
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I just make "garbage soup." I take all the veggie scraps left over from cooking -- carrot peels, potato peels, onion and garlic skins, and whatever else-- and simmer it for a long time (at least half hour, often more). Then I strain out the veggie scraps and put the stock in a jar in the fridge. The secret is to keep doing this. The next time I have veggie scraps, I get out the jar and simmer the new scraps in the same stock from last time (adding water to keep it from reducing too much). Each time you do it, the stock gets richer. After three times or so, it is ready to use as soup stock, instead of water for cooking rice, etc.

This really adds depth to vegetarian soups, which can be a bit bland otherwise. I don't put any herbs in the stock, because that would limit what it could be used for. The herbs go in the dish, soup or whatever, that the stock is used in.

The strained out scraps go in the compost and are now ready to compost quickly, being softened and moist.

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Lindsaylew82
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Over the past 2 years, I’ve stopped eating meat entirely, and dairy as well, so my stocks are generally plant-based. I will use what I have over something going in the trash. My mother will purchase meat, with plans for me to cook for company, but then doesn’t invite said company, but no one here eats meat, soooooooooo. I’m not ok with chucking it in the trash. So I do stuff, and preserve, and wreck my guts eating meat and making stock. It’s not an often thing, but it happened twice this year.

My vegetable stocks are different every single time I make them. I save up every single vegetable scrap I’ve got, cause I’m just not diligent enough with my compost pile to tend to it regularly, and freeze them until I’ve got what I need to fill a crockpot, then I add herbs and spices. Parsley, thyme, ginger, sometimes orange and lemon if I’ve made something that gives me a few rinds. My usual cooking scraps include onion, carrot, celery, squash, zucchini, Brussels sprouts (a lot of waste here otherwise, with peeling the ugly leaves off), potato, sweet potato, corn cobs, cabbage, lettuce hearts, fruit cores.... all my kitchen scraps! I cook it on low overnight in the crockpot, strain in the morning and the season with salt to taste. Freezer space is limited, here, so freezing bags of stock is out. I pour it into mason jars, and use either my old and true pressure canner, or more recently, the pressure cooker XL (like an instapot) to do my pressure canning. The result is always slightly different. Not a clear broth, but more like a rich stock that I generally have to dilute with some water when using to make things like soups and veggie pho. Almost always, it’s a rich amber color.

This past thanksgiving and Christmas, I did my usual scraps, but added the carcass (and the vegetables that were stuffed into the cavity) of a roasted turkey at thanksgiving, and the bones of a roasted pork shoulder and butt for Christmas. They gave NICE flavor, and a thickness (..idk maybe creaminess or unctuousness might be better? Something about all that collagen is just... a pleasant mouth feel) to the broth. I processed them the same way, but I skim off the fat prior to canning.

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digitS'
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I am probably not the best person to respond but when I see "6 to 10 hours" for cooking :shock: : I doubt 1% of the people cooking dinner most nights at home will ever get to that recipe, in their lifetimes!

That chicken is even cooked "before adding to pot." Yes, that's what I do but having allowed my last laying flock to live out their lives in the backyard and not go into a pot - I have little interest in buying a "stewing" hen for stock. What I do is boil bones from what has already been cooked, served, eaten, and left-over. There may be a fair amount of meat on a holiday turkey but that and the bones have been cooked before they go in the stock pot. I've learned that roasting vegetables before using them for stock adds a lot of flavor.

Steak and roast beef bones, as well -- I claim that a bone doesn't leave the house without being boiled. That's mostly true and there is always a freezer bag of stock ready for stir-fries or soup. And, we eat quite a lot of those things. I use a 90 minute schedule for boiling and add the vegetables, late. These might be kind of sub-standard vegetables, big chunks, carrots unpeeled. I don't use anything that I wouldn't eat if they were cooked a little less than an hour in boiling water but by that time, they aren't very appetizing. They provide most of the flavor but I have a frequent tendency to add Mrs. Dash and, if I haven't used garlic, garlic salt. I tend not to add salt by itself. My soups often have Maggi sauce added.

We are products of our experiences growing up. Mom didn't like having chickens but we lived on a farm and had beef cattle. I remember making sure that the meat packing company made a lot of stew meat rather than turning much of that beef into hamburger. Stew was far more common than soup at the dinner table and Mom did not use stock. Soup bones went to the dog.

My first experiences making soup was when I was living on the Pacific ocean. Clam beds were about a mile away. I could see salt water from my front yard :) . Low tide, I could bring quite a few home :D . So ... I made clam chowder. No stock. I still like milk, half & half, cream, and in recent years, Greek yogurt in my soups. I'm usually making cream soups but I cook things like the soup veggies, meat, and pasta in stock. Seasonings like bay leaves for beef and thyme for chicken, often parsley or cilantro for either - good stuff for this cook who likes to keep things simple :wink: .

Steve

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The only time I made a decent stock was by accident. I boiled pork ribs for an hour in prep for a BBQ rib recipe. That stock was fragrant and it only had 3 lbs of pork ribs and water with nothing else in it. I eventually used some of it and added konbu, soy and other seasoning for saimin soup. The only other soup I have made was for Portuguese bean soup. The day before, smoked hocks are simmered for 4 hours, or since I don't like to sit around tending a pot, I use a pressure cooker and cook the hocks for 45 min at 15 lbs of pressure. I made cabbage soup before. It was not as successful. I think the problem was actually with the cabbages which made the soup sour.

I did try to make soup by roasting the meat and vegetables first. Maybe I roasted it too long since I got a char. It made the soup dark and cloudy and without salt and herbs, it was just dark water. I also cooked it for much longer than an hour which probably was too long.

Freezing the vegetables sounds like an idea. I actually do freeze veggies now, but that is to eventually feed worms or trench compost in the garden. I do freeze shrimp shells and heads mainly because they will stink up the garbage can so I throw them out on trash day. I have used frozen shrimp shells and heads before to make pancit. The shells and heads are fried in oil and garlic to make a flavor base for the pancit, then removed.

I think I may need to add more vegetables. I probably have too much water for the amounts of vegetables the recipe calls for. I can save some things like the vegetable peelings for stock. I think I will try to add more flavor with mushrooms. Shitake mushrooms have to be soaked anyway and I usually add the water to whatever I am cooking. It might give me that richness that I am lacking. I always thought that making stock took a long time, and it is convenient to use bouillon cubes or ready made broth. But, it seems that good stock should not take up a whole day of cooking especially if I don't make bone broth or I use the pressure cooker instead. Even if the basic stock is bland, when it comes to finalizing the dish, I can add the parsley and herbs at that time and I will be better able to control the total salt in the dish. Kitchen bouquet and maggi are staples in Thai vegetarian cooking, but maggi is like fish sauce, it is primarily the salt (and flavor) component, so it contains too much sodium unless I cut the amount a lot. Thanks a lot for the tips. I will put some of these into practice as soon as I save up enough scraps.

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digitS'
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What is Portuguese bean soup, Imafan?

I made a version of Portuguese kale soup just yesterday! Since our growing season is so far in the past - it wasn't Portuguese kale but Scotch kale from the market ;)

I'm a fan of Portuguese kale from my garden. Yes! And, I put white beans (& potatoes) in those soups. It wasn't too good or healthy, yesterday. I like to use Italian hot sausage. Yesterday, DW had "little smokies" to use and they were too salty and, really, I think it is very good using a sausage that is not smoked.

Yes to bland stock and spicy soup. There's time to add flavor.

Steve

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There are so many ethnic groups in Hawaii and almost everyone knows at least one dish from each one. Sushi, tempura, and BBQ meat from Japan. Korean :Kalbi, namul, Bulgogi, Filipino: pancit, lechon, pinakbet, ensamada, and halo halo. Thai : Pad Thai, Chicken and Basil. Hawaiian: poi and laulau. Not to mention the fushion foods. The Portuguese contributed Portuguese Bean Soap, Malasadas, Bacalhau, vinha d'alhos, and Sweet Bread.

Most Portuguese foods we get are peasant foods and the recipes vary a lot. Hawaiian Portuguese bean soup is different because there are so many versions. The basics are the Smoked hocks or ham bone and Portuguese sausage with beans and vegetables in a tomato based thick soup. Below are two recipes. The first is from the annual Punahou carnival which is a short cut recipes since it uses canned beans. It also has macaroni which personally, I don't like. It does not say how long to cook the hocks. It depends on if you boil them in a pot for 4 hours or if you use a pressure cooker. The second one comes from a very old Maui Cookbook and is the more traditional one that uses dried beans.

When my dad makes Portuguese bean soup, he plans it for a week and it takes two days to cook and you eat it the next day.
Smoked hocks are cooked on the first day for 4 hours in a large pot to make the ham stock and dried beans are soaked over night. My dad considers canned beans sacrilege. The next day, the soup is defatted, the meat is taken off the bones. If you need room in the pot the bones can be left out,but the marrow is the best part. The beans and cabbage are cooked separately. Potatoes and carrots can be diced added to the stock the first day. They will melt down and help to thicken and sweeten the soup. The Portuguese sausage is cut into small disks and fried separately and drained. Portuguese sausage can be found in any market here but it is hard to find on the mainland. Portuguese sausage is one of the things we bring if we visit friends or family on the mainland. I once saw a woman in the market with a shopping cart full of sausages and I asked her if she was planning a trip. She said she just got back and missed the sausages. Andouille or Kielbasa works although it tastes a little different. I like the hot sausage, mild will not have much flavor left. Portuguese sausage is a favorite breakfast food. Portuguese sausage and rice is even a mainstay at McDonalds. The cabbage is cooked separately and added to the soup last. It can make the soup taste sour. Kale is traditional in the original soup (Portuguese kale to be more precise called couve tronchuda), but in the early days, kale was not easy to find so head cabbage was used instead. Portuguese bean soup roots are in Caldo Verde. Kale or Portuguese Kale would actually be an appropriate substitute and probably even closer to what would have been used in Portugal. My favorite recipe is Frank De Lima's and he adds watercress in his version. It can be added with or in place of the cabbage. Watercress is also a staple here and it has gotten more expensive. Ii does not look like the mainland version. Our watercress is about 18 inches tall and it is not as bitter as the one I had on the mainland. His recipe serves 100 it needs to be cut down. Traditionally, soup is served with pan or bread, but in Hawaii, it is hard to go to sleep if you don't have rice for dinner, so we will eat it with rice. Another reason why I don't like macaroni in the soup. It is too much starch with rice, or bread for that matter, but it is o.k. if you are only going to eat the soup with macaroni and no other starch. It just makes it hard to sleep.

https://archives.starbulletin.com/1999/0 ... quest.html
https://www.hawaiimagazine.com/content/ ... -bean-soup
https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/a ... a-de-couve

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Gary350
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Stock is actually very easy to make each family makes it there way.

I like chicken stock best. I don't like beef meat much but I do like beef stock & beef stew. Pork stock does not have a flavor I like but it does make good gravy.

If you like only white chicken meat then use white meat to make chicken stock. If you like dark meat then use it. If you like both white & dark meat use both. No matter what stock you make, beef, chicken, pork, make sure the meat has bone it add a lot of very good flavor.

Put about 2 quarts of water in a pot on the stove or electric crock pot. Add the meat and let it boil about 1 hour. You might need to add more water if too much boils away.

We always cook with a crock pot it is so easy you never have to worry about burning the food and you don't have to stir pot every 5 minutes like cooking on the stove. Turn on the crock pot then go to, work, Walmart, work in garden, wow grass, you don't have to stand over the stove all day like you do with a pot on the stove. If you cooking beef, pork, chicken put in crock pot on medium heat go to work all day come home and finish the cook in 30 minutes to 1 hr.

Chicken Stock is easy meat will usually peal off the bone very easy after boiling 1 hour in water. Use lots of water about 2 quarts or more for a whole chicken. Remove all the meat from bone then return bones and fat back to the boiling water. Cook bones another hour small bones will dissolve into the stock. Larger bones will cook into the stock too if you cook them long enough so cook only long enough to get the flavor you like. Add about 1 cup celery sliced into thin pieces, onion & garlic to taste, cook 1 hr until flavors all goes into the stock. Last 15 minutes of the cook add, bay leaf, salt & pepper to taste and any other herbs you like. Turn off heat let stock cool with lid about 1 hour then pour stock through a screen wire strainer to remove all, bone, fat, chicken pieces, herb pieces, etc from liquid. If stock has too much fat it can be removed easy by putting stock in refrigerator over night next day remove fat on the top surface of the liquid.

Beef Stock & Pork stock is easy too but meat needs to cook about 6 to 8 hours for it to crumble up and fall off the bone. Cook bone as long as you need to so you have all the bone flavor you like. Add onion, garlic & celery, last 1 hour of the cook. Add, herbs, salt, pepper, bay leaf, last 15 minutes of the cook. Pour through wire screen strainer to get clean clean stock.

imafan26
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I understood that a stock is made mostly with the bones and only remnants of meat vs broth which has more meat along with the bones. Broth takes a shorter time to cook about 4 hours with the vegetables and spices added in during the last half of cooking. Stock has a deeper flavor and more gelatin from the bones but takes 6-8 hours to make. Stock usually has less salt. Lately though, I am unable to find stock with very little salt. I was able to find stock with 40 mg sodium per serving vs 640-800 mg sodium for broth, Broth is usually lighter in color than stock. Swanson's unsalted chicken broth contains 130 mg sodium just under the 140 mg ceiling for "unsalted" labeling. Herb ox sodium free has zero sodium and fat but it has sugar to replace the sodium for flavor. it is 1 gm sugar or 10 calories. I can live with that, but I would rather have real broth made from real meat and bones and not just fat, dried powders, and preservatives.

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digitS'
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I don't feel that any controversy about broth and stock serves any real purpose but there have been times when I have been seriously confused about what I was doing in the kitchen. (DW would probably claim that this is perpetual but then I wouldn't be helping her by reading recipes out loud while she tosses together ingredients. ;))

Beard, James "A stock is a broth is a bouillon". The Armchair James Beard. "The other morning my old friend Helen McCully called me at an early hour and said, 'Now that you're revising your fish book, for heaven's sake, define the difference between a stock, a broth and a bouillon. No book does.' The reason no book does is that they are all the same thing. A stock, which is also a broth or a bouillon, is basically some meat, game, poultry, or fish simmered in water with bones, seasonings, and vegetables."

Steve

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Beard, James "A stock is a broth is a bouillon".

Thanks for that, Steve. It echoes my own thoughts (and general attitude to things? :) ). For once I had refrained from expressing them. When following recipes I bypass many of the fiddly bits I think of as show-off Cheffy stuff. And I like to condense my written recipes to the minimum; ideally they will fit on a 3x5 inch file card. Oh, have I revealed that I mostly prefer paper records over digital?

A compact recipe can be clipped with a magnet to the range hood.

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That is I guess the difference between bakers and cooks. Cooks KISS everything and throw everything into the pot and season to taste and it comes out great. Baking is different, ratios matter, so there are only a few things you can fudge with and it is always better to measure or weigh things out. It is probably also why I am such a bad bread maker. It is one of those recipes where practice makes perfect because you have to go by the feel and the look of the dough as the amount of flour you use can be a cup or more different dependent on temperature and humidity.

There is a definite difference in taste and look for me when I use stock, broth, or bouillon. The stock usually is darker and has a little less salt, but it is still too salty for what I need and I still have to dilute it. Then, it usually tastes watery. Even though I use only a 1/4 of a bouillon cube, it has an aftertaste and it the saltiest of the lot.

When I make things like Jook, or dashi from scratch, I never put enough salt in it. It smells good, but does not have any taste. With dashi, I add dashi which not only has a lot of salt, it has something even worse, MSG. Jook, I usually make with the remnants of a Costco rotisserie chicken so it won't go to waste, but I do know that a young bird does not make as flavorful a broth and an older hen.

I usually add either bouillon, or broth to the pot. I usually omit table salt from most of what I cook, even if the recipe calls for it. Except for baking. I asked a chef once if I could leave the salt out and he said it would not be a good idea for bread since the salt controls the yeast. I also now understand why my cousin always made monster bread rolls.

It is not to say that I don't add salt, I do, it is usually in the form of fish sauce, oyster sauce, nam pla, hoisin, sazon, or low salt soy sauce. I can only use very little of these things because in many ways they are way saltier than salt and I suspect some of them also contain MSG. It is hard for me to tell since the labels are often written in Kanji. I can only read some hiragana and a few Chinese characters. The Kanji for MSG, I don't recognize. I rarely use hoisin, because like MSG, it can give me a headache if I use it the way the recipe calls for it to be used. All of these things and salt will cause me to retain water and I do have to pay for that usually within a day.

I also prefer paper over digital. I have 4 recipe boxes and a book case full of recipe books. But, I have started to put some recipes online at Food.com nee Recipezaar especially the older recipes I don't want to lose as a backup. I do prefer the simpler recipes, but some of them are longer because it is not so much the ingredient as the technique that matters. Some recipes omit some important things you need to do.

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Stock, broth, bouillon:

I suppose what we call them is a mixture of semantic preference, commercial labeling and the language you grew up with in your original kitchen. In my case 'stock' was a liquid made by simmering mostly-leftover bones & veges. It could be a base for soup and flavoring for other dishes. 'Broth' was some kind of finished soup but I'd have trouble defining it now. Both of these were created from scratch and used soon; we had no refrigeration. 'Bouillon' was a commercial product usually sold in little cubes, now also as a liquid concentrate. Why it uses a French name I don't know - probably a marketing example of the 'show-off Cheffy stuff' I referred to before :); 'broth concentrate' wouldn't have the same - wait for it - cachet! 'Chef' itself is another example; At home it was 'Head Cook and Bottle-Washer'.

In my own head I'm happy to call them stock, soup and (oui) 'bouillon', but "To each his/her own."

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rainbowgardener
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I don't like the definition of stock as being "meat, fish, poultry" based. I make perfectly good vegetarian soup stock....

Broth or boullion you can define how ever you want. :) However, they do make those little boullion cubes in vegetarian versions also.

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I have used vegetarian bouillon before. It is o.k. I used it to make miso soup. Hon dashi was better. it uses shrimp or bonito flakes. Actually a vegetarian soup stock would be fine. It all depends on the herbs that are used since soup stock for Asian dishes like oxtail soup, Tom yum, Pho, or Thai noodle soup has different herbs and spices than a western broth. Asian broths will use konbu or seafood (bonito, shrimp, fish), chicken, pork, or beef for the base. Vegetarian stocks will have daikon, carrots, scallions, pak choi, anise, garlic, cilantro, ginger, onions, mushrooms, celery, water cress, burdock, or other greens. Ochazuke is actually one of the simplest broths to make. You just need to have some hot green tea and pour it over cooked rice in a bowl. Okayu is even easier, you just cook rice with a lot more water to make a congee or porridge.

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All the discussions in the thread have been very interesting. I’ve refrained from commenting because I have no set recipe for anything. I stopped using cubes and powders a good while ago mostly due to the chemicals and preservatives (except for the Japanese curry “roux” which I have to admit I still crave once in a while, even though I also turn around and try to make curry from as basic “scratch” level as ai can — though not quite on the authentic level.

I don’t use canned (in metal can) because they taste funny to me, I do use the Ultra Pasteurized cartons of broth — usually chicken or mushroom. Good tasting beef broth is hard to find. We tried the so called “bone broth” once and threw it away — DH refused to experiment with other brands. I also make the Japanese konbu-dashi and katsuo/mackerel/bonito or hon-dashi (no additives) and/or the dried anchovies dashi.

During the winter, DH and I make overnight soup — this can be almost anything — pork or beef ribs, chicken legs or turkey legs or “oh look this meat was in the freezer” or ham or lamb leg ... or it might start out as Oden — and this involves DH getting all kinds of frozen fried fish/vegetable/tofu cakes, dipping them in separate pot of boiling water first to remove excess oils, then throwing them all in a giant stock pot with at least 12 inches of konbu.

Unless we want to take the extra trouble to remove the back and tiny bones before they fall apart in the soup, we don’t bother with poultry backs and ribs or wings unless we’re processing turkey carcass.

Once the bone-in meat/fish cake are ready, we toss in whatever vegetables we have — Depending on who initiates the soup, the ingredients and what gets added later are sometimes strictly controlled (“Don’t touch my soup!” :lol: ). Daikon usually goes in first with konbu if oden, but usually onions, carrots, potatoes, maybe celery for westerns soups, mushrooms or shiitake, etc. Chicken soup often gets rice, at some point after first round of servings Oden gets udon noodles, the potatoes fall apart, and the soup thickens as a result. If we keep adding things, it may take us 3 days to finish the soup. (the stockpot is left on the simmer ring and reheated to boiling in the morning)

I waited to share this because basically we’re making stock as part of the cooking process and not previously. We have tried to save the stock from these soups, but somehow, it mostly all gets eaten unless we are thoroughly bored of eating it ... then we might end up freezing some. Sometimes, the last of the thickened soup can be turned into a curry to serve over hot rice.

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That is pretty much how I accidentally made stock. I was boiling pork ribs for a BBQ rib recipe. Beef ribs I usually bake instead. It was a lot of ribs about 6 lbs of it in my dutch oven and covered with water. It takes about an hour and a half to make the ribs tender, then I take them out. Put on my special BBQ marinade and broil them. The recipe calls for grilling, but I always broiled them instead. The broth smelled great and had great color, but it did not have any seasoning, not even salt. It was still good enough for a base so I froze it and when I wanted to make a "soup" I would use that instead of water. The seasonings for the soup would be made at that time. I would still end up using canned broth or bouillon since I am never able to figure out what to do about the salt. I save the water from soaking the dried shitake mushrooms a lot since it has a strong flavor. It does have grit, so I do have to strain it through a filter. When I read recipes, it seems like they are often leaving out steps since when I try to make a soup base it smells good but has no flavor.


Most recipes seem to skip or leave out steps re: to fry or bake the bones first, parboiling the bones and washing them to get of some of the scum. Vegetables seem to be just cut and added (not sauteed or baked first). Only one Portuguese bean soup recipe says to add diced potatoes and carrots when cooking the stock. These vegetables will melt down and thicken the soup. More of the same vegetables in larger chunks are added to the soup later.
It makes sense to add fresh herbs at the end. Then there is how long to cook it all. It seems most of you are saying that broth should not take more than a couple of hours to make. One of recipes I found did actually say that overcooking vegetables make them bitter and they don't taste very good. I have overcooked konbu, so I know that is not a good thing either.

When you make broth from scratch. How much salt do you add to say about cups of water? I would have to add less, right now I don't add anything. In fact, I usually use smoked hocks or sausage for sauce bases because they have so much salt and spices that they are enough to start the base. I also like sazon. While I may not be adding salt, these things contain salt, sometimes even more salt than I can handle. Even herb ox salt free bouillon substitutes potassium and sugar for salt, but it also contains MSG. I actually read the package labeling more than ever. Things labeled low salt, no added salt, or salt free usually have substituted sugar for salt and there is some other source of sodium present like MSG which is actually worse than salt for me. The low sodium broths still have significant amounts of salt, they are just below the legal limit which allows them to call it "low salt". I do like the Trader Joe's salt free mix. It has the most flavor. Mrs Dash, not so much, unless I use about half a bottle of it. I do use Nusalt which contains potassium instead of sodium. Too much of it leaves a nasty aftertaste but in small amounts it does enhance flavor. I usually have to cook differently if I am bringing something to a pot luck or to share. If I cook for myself, I prefer either no salt or much less salt than other people prefer. I load up on pepper instead.

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digitS'
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Imafan,

We don't usually add any salt when just making the stock.

The salt can be added later and, as I mentioned above, that can be in soy or Maggi sauce, or something like them. Mrs Dash is often used for the finished dish.

Steve

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We don’t add much salt either but I don’t pay attention to actual count. All kinds of flavor develops from the ingredients. Some ingredients already have salt in them. Except for the oden and package curry that might already have soy ingredients, we dom’t add soy-based sauce or flavor enhancements.

But to answer your question @imafan, I often add maybe 1/2 tsp to 1 tsp at most of sea salt when initially sweating veg’s but otherwise no salt is added until meat is cooked, and even then maybe not.

We keep grinding salt in a salt grinder on the table — sometimes it’s sea salt, sometime Himalayan pink rock salt. A few grinds to taste in own serving is sometimes enough.


...not sure if it was entirely coincidence that this showed up on my YouTube recommended list just now...

Box art —
Made from HON-DASHI package

SQWIB
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Broth - from meat
Stock - from Bones

Laura is always making some type of chicken dish and toss's the trimmings when I'm not looking. I have been trying to save the trimmings, vac-seal and make a broth.

Well I finally accumulated some trimmings and went to town using a pressure cooker.

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I pressure cooked the chicken trimmings for one hour, drained off the broth and refrigerated, shredded the chicken trimmings in the presuure cooker, added more water, celery, onions and a bit of salt and cooked for an hour. I had to do this twice (total 4 cooks) Batches were mixed, refrigerated, poured through a strainer to remove the grease, then I used some of the broth in my chicken and dumplings and the remainder was canned.

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I had enough broth to make 10 quarts of chicken and dumplings.

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I also got five 1.5 pints of broth (forgot to add vinegar to the pressure canner)

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I was extremely happy, not only because I freed up room in the freezer but because Laura said she was impressed with the Chicken broth and said she would save the trimmings for me!

imafan26
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That's good to know. I thought one of the reasons the broth was so bland was because I did not add salt to it. Except for the salt that was already in things like smoked meats and konbu. I think I probably need to add more veggies and bones to the pot. I may be starting with too much water or it is not reducing enough. I could leave the pot uncovered when I am simmering it.

I probably have to work more on seasoning the broth afterwards. I probably am not using enough herbs and spices or in case of my dried herbs, I need to use more because they are more than 6 months old. I should be able improve the flavor without needing to add a lot of salt or salt substitute. If I use the broth as a base for flavorful ingredients like shitake mushrooms, choi cabbages, and add toppings like green onions, cilantro, meat, fish, and a lot of pepper I should actually let the ingredients provide the flavor and the broth will be mostly a supporting element. Probably means that my saimin probably needs to be a vegetable saimin. I can use tamarind as a base for the flavoring. I don't like it very much, but it is o.k. if there is only a little of it.

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applestar
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This is another example of our soup/stew — Pork Coconut Cream Stew

Approx 4 Lbs of Pork Shoulder cut into 1.5-2 inch chunks. I started by trimming some fat from dry-cured bacon and slowly heating them in the bottom of the stew pot, then added the meat and browned on all sides as much as possible. At first the loosely added pieces could be turned and properly brown but after a while the pieces got piled up on top and they just cooked and released juices, but that’s OK. I added chopped onions and diced carrots (organic, scrubbed, with peel left on), minced garlic, more carrots cut into big chunks (more carrots than you might think — my family loves carrots), diced fresh turmeric finger, a very large kaffir lime leaf, minced fresh parsley stems and leaves, dried rosemary, about a tablespoon of ground celery root, Extra large egg-sized yellow and red potatoes cut in half, frozen peas and corn, a good glug of mirin (seasoned brewed cooking wine), homemade sea salt koji, some (not very many) about 1 inch square torn up fresh organic navel orange peel, then an entire can of Trader Joe’s organic coconut cream (this thing tastes so good I spooned some out to eat straight), then some more water until everything was barely covered. nothing was skimmed — so full fat.

OMG so rich and flavorful. Funny thing is I left word that the stew can be eaten when the meat is cooked enough and potatoes are cooked. When I returned a couple of hours later, it seemed like half the pot was gone. LOL

imafan26
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Oh, that sounds so yummy. I would not have thought to mix east and west seasonings. Tumeric, kaffir lime I associate with Thai cooking. Rosemary and celery I associate with western stews. Did you use cilantro or Italian parsley? Basil should work too added at the end. I only have hot basil (tulsi), but it would be something to try.

I use mirin for things like sukiyaki and sushi, for longer cooked stews I prefer to use Shao Hsing or Sherry wine. For Beef, I usually use Port, burgundy, or Marsala.

I would not usually consider citrus peels. But, I have made sinigang which uses tamarind for sourness or guava for a sweet sour tang. I have also eaten Tom Yum which can have calamondin limes added to it. The only other soup I have used citrus peels in was Chinese oxtail soup. There is a lemon chicken soup. I did make it once, but it was too lemony and sour for me. I would actually rather have hot and sour soup instead.

I like cooking with coconut milk and coconut cream. It is especially good when fresh hot peppers are also in the recipe since coconut milk can temper the heat of the peppers.

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applestar
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Italian flat-leaf parsley from my Winter Indoor Garden.

When I add alcohol to recipes, I don’t always follow the rules — actually I don’t always follow any recommended recipe at all and just add a little of this and a little of that. Picture me with a witches hat and a cauldron. :lol:

But in particular, it’s been a while since I’ve had a full selection in my liquor cabinet, so I just grab whatever is handy and likely to work. Mirin is in the pantry and easier to grab (I use organic brewed mirin with no additives except sugar and salt). I might have used sake, but I‘d used the last drop in a Japanese style Rice cooker charchiu recipe (approx 1.5 Lbs of the 8 Lbs pork shoulder Boston roast) ...which I forcibly tweaked into more Chinese-style flavor by adding a goodly amount of 5-spice powder. Haha.

Btw, the orange peel was for me a wonderful addition — the texture ends up being firm enough to hold its shape, but soft with a burst of contained flavor and aroma that has not been extracted into the stew (you would like it if you like marmalade). I love this kind of texture and flavor adventures as you eat and chew so that in one dish, you find different flavors within each spoonful and from different portions in the bowl. Turmeric was also fun with the somewhat crunchy texture. DH is not a fan and the unexpected surprises can get overwhelming for him. Some of the exotic flavors turn my DD’s off, too, so I have to be careful. They liked this stew though.

...I had a lemon soup once in a restaurant that I thought would burn holes in my stomach. I could not finish. I do like “squeeze of lemon or lime” in a lot of situations, and usually like lemon sauce, but not in soup so strong that the acid overwhelms and trips danger signals.



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