Anne loves to have blocks of frozen vegetable stock in the freezer to use whenever a recipe calls for some. The way they accomplish this is to keep a silicone bag in the freezer and as they cook they put all the scraps of veggies that would be tasty in stock in this bag. Once every couple of weeks they dump the bag of collected scraps into a large stockpot and create the stock and then freeze it. Cooking stock in this way is really nice because it uses up most of the bits that are leftover after cooking other meals.
Here are some kitchen scraps that make really nice vegetable stock:
mushroom stems
onion ends and skins
garlic ends and skins
chard and kale stems
carrot ends and tops
squash ends
broccoli stems
ginger peels
cauliflower stems
Here are some items we don’t recommend for stock (although feel free to experiment and find what works for you):
bell peppers
any moldy bits of vegetables that you cut away
fruit
green bean ends
pea pods
Once you have a filled bag of vegetable trimmings, put them in a large stock pot and cover with hot water. Bring it up to a boil. Add 4 to 6 peppercorns, a generous pinch of salt, a bay leaf, and any fresh or dried herbs you have around (it’s ok to omit these if you don’t have any, but we really like rosemary, thyme, sage, and parsley for this purpose). Turn the pot down to a simmer and allow to simmer 20 minutes. Strain the liquid. Use hot, or allow to cool before freezing into small or large cubes.
