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When you’re short on time and stressed out, quality stock is doubly important to help keep you well and nourish your body so you have energy. Jeff’s job interview went well on Monday and we’ll find out later in the week if he got the job. Because we’re coping with waiting and preparing for possible change, I’m upping our consumption of stock to help keep us well. I just don’t have enough time to devote to the kitchen right now, so here are the three big hints to help keep your time commitment to a minimum when you’re super busy.
Use A Crock-Pot
Don’t be afraid to use a crock-pot. This week on Facebook, someone asked me about lead in slow cookers. The conversation led to someone pointing out a post on Terminal Verbosity where the author had multiple crock-pots from multiple brands tested. None of them tested positive for lead. I have personally tested mine using a home-purchased lead test kit as have friends of mine. All turned out negative.
I’m personally comfortable using a crock-pots that tested negative as I no longer consider it a lead risk. I do encourage you to test yours since crock-pots seem to have fallen out of favor with traditional foodists. It will cost a couple of bucks but it will give you peace of mind while saving you a lot of time.
Do A Continuous Brew
As referenced in earlier blog posts, dipping out what you need and replacing it with water, then adding fresh bones or vegetables as you have them can make an easy way to keep stock available all of the time. This is especially helpful if you’ve got someone sick in the house who can use extra healing or you’re all down and eating odd amounts at odd times. You don’t have to heat anything up, just dip it into a cup and sip. Don’t forget the Concentrace!
You also wind up with fewer dishes to wash using this method. This method is also far more convenient in terms of scheduling as you can leave the stock overnight or a few extra hours without harm. I recommend combining this with the crock-pot method above.
Freeze Your Bones
Conversely, don’t be afraid to freeze your bones and make large batches of stock once you’ve collected plenty of bones and veggie scraps. It’s about the same hands-on time to make 4 gallons as it is to make 2 quarts, so when I’m pushed for time making it in bulk can really save time.
What Do You Do?
What’s your favorite way to save time while making nutritious stock? I’d love to hear your suggestions!
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I work full time outside of the home, and am home later in the evening two or three times a week, so I often freeze the chicken carcasses until I’m ready to make stock. During the colder months, when I eat lots of soup, I try to time it so I can make soup as soon as the stock is ready. I’ll ladle it out of the crock pot and into the stock pot on the stove; it’s already heated up, so I save on gas *and* time getting the stock hot enough to cook my vegetables for the soup. Then I throw in the already cooked chicken that I pulled and saved from when I roasted the whole chickens. For me, the crock pot is the only way to go for making stock.
Thanks so much for the link-back on my post about lead in crock pots! I love the idea behind CTF. I make my own stock most of the time, and have a loose recipe or formula that I follow, varying the ingredients based on what is on hand:
http://www.terminalverbosity.com/2009/10/05/making-chicken-and-vegetable-stock/
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I’ve made broth with my pressure cooker. It goes faster, but I wonder if it does as good a job as a long slow simmer. The bones get reduced to white looking and often soft. . . . I also use my crock pot, because then I don’t have to pay attention at all.
I do the crockpot thing whenever I have only one chicken carcass to make broth from.
I do the freezer thing constantly, saving ends and peels of onions, carrots, etc so I always have veggie scraps for broth making. Also save bones when I don’t have time for broth-making right now. Which reminds me, I have a large ham bone I should do up…
The continuous method works well in winter, cause it’s so dry with heating that one wants water simmering anyways for comfort (also high humidity makes it feel warmer so you can turn down the thermostat to some degree). The downside is you end up with “generic” broth, instead of chicken, beef, ham, turkey, etc.
My favorite with a turkey is to use the roasting pan across two burners as it not only lets me make loads of turkey broth from the carcass, but also cleans the pan.
I am new to the traditional foods concept but I am wanting to learn as much as possible. so this may be an elementary question but do you need to use raw bones to make bone broth or is using the carcass after being roasted and picked just as good?
thanks
krista
Krista, you can do either. Using roasted bones gives the stock a deeper color and a different flavor from raw bones, but either has lots of good nutrition. We do have a free class on making bone broths, if you’re interested. Click here to learn more or Click here to sign up.