The Wholesome Steward

I think broth or stock, has been one of the best things I have learned, and it’s so incredible easy to make! Broth is needed in so many recipes and can be used in place of water in even more places for a boost of nutrients! Moreover, it really makes so much use of something that would otherwise be considered waste! We are fortunate enough to be able to get beef from someone in our community! Which means we pay for the bones whether we get them or not! So, I have been so grateful that most all of my broth to be bone and vegetables.

To make broth you just need all the scraps you would normally throw away, along with some water! I don’t salt my broth yet; I feel this makes it more versatile! What kind of scraps, you may ask, let me list them for you! The papery skins off of onions or garlic, and the rooty ends, the peels from carrots, potatoes or any other veggies really, the ends you cut off of celery, carrots, or any vegetables, those herbs you harvested from the garden that have hung for too long and you haven’t ground up into a useable powder. Any bones that pass through your kitchen would be perfect: ham, soup bones, whole chicken carcass, t-bone steak, bone in roast… anything! I keep an ongoing freezer bag with the veggie scraps and when that’s full or I have a big lot of bones I put bones and veggies in the instapot and put on slow cooker for a good long time! If you don’t have an instapot you can use a large pot with a lid depending on the fit, you’ll have to add water every so often due to steam evaporation. I prefer the instapot because there is very little evaporation. Get the heat up, make it hot-warm, then I turn it down to simmer for about 2 days. Some people turn it off overnight, this is probably a wise idea, I don’t, I just put it in God’s hands! I usually go for more than 24 hours sometimes 3 days. Some people add apple cider vinegar to pull nutrients from the bones in a shorter time!

For me this makes about 3-4 pint sized jars full. I can either put them right into the fridge and work them into my meals. If I have a lot of scraps I might make a double batch, then I feel better because I can fill up the pressure canner and can them. Then they are shelf stable and ready whenever I need them!

How to use this nutrient dense liquid? It is often listed in many recipes for soup or in the bottom of a pot for a roast. It can be used in place of water in just about any recipe as far as I have seen. You can cook rice in it and the rice will soak up all those nutrients, you could even do the same idea and cook noodles in it if you had a surplus, I would hate to dump so much down the drain! Since I leave mine unsalted, I just taste as I go! if I need chicken broth and I don’t have any or the flavor just isn’t what I’d hoped for I keep better than bullion in my fridge and I will add a little of that at a time until it tastes right!

I believe in the command God gave in the beginning for Adam and Eve to care for the land and the animals. In using all these parts, I feel I’m being a good steward of what God gave me. Sometimes I hear my grandmas voice ringing in my ear “waste not, want not”. Plus, now I am getting so much more for free from the stuff I was throwing away… when I think of how much money I wasted buying those cartons of broth or stock and throwing away so much. Now I have more stock and use it in so much more than ever before.

What’s the difference between broth and stock? Stock has bones and connective tissue and is generally unseasoned, whereas broth has meat and skin and usually has salt and pepper. Honestly, I never knew the difference between them before writing this! In the store I never really saw a difference in what to get! All this time I have been calling it broth, in reality I make stock the most! So, thank you friends, truly, for leading me to discover the difference! I believe words matter, and now I can call it by its proper name!