Never made any before but broth doesn’t seem worth it unless you make a big batch, even then I don’t have the room for a big ass pot or a gallon of broth in my fridge/freezer.
Beef/chicken/vegi stock, totally. I have to drive 65 miles to the closest store that sells pork stock, but I can get pork bones from my local butcher, so it’s absolutely worth it to make my own pork stock for home made hot and sour soup.
There was a Chinese restaurant in town when I was growing up that used pork stock and I’ve never had hot and sour soup as good as his. Sadly he retired in 2015 and shut down the restaurant.
I just don’t get enough scraps for how much I cook with stock. I’ll have a couple ziplocks of bones and veg and roast them, then boil, deglaze the roasting pans into the pot, boil, boil, reduce, reduce… great now I can make… a few servings of soup, a cup of concentrate for sauces.
There are a couple of things that make this easier :
throw your trimmings from vegetables into freezer bags. Then freeze them until you have a day to make broth. Onion peels color broth, so don’t forget to save those.
concentrate the broth. Once you have the flavor you like, strain out the chunks and put it back on a simmer until there’s 1/4 to 1/2 the volume.
pour the concentrated broth into muffin tins and freeze. Pop them out and throw them in a freezer bag. You now have individually portioned condensed broth that you can throw in whatever you’re cooking.
My broth/stock hack is to just get a bulk canister of dehydrated stock powder marketed to restaurants, you can find perfectly acceptable quality-wise for any use at home and its consistent. I do save things for making soups but come on… you’re not gonna get a quantity that’s worth all the effort if you’re just going through the food you’d eat at home. These ingredients how they’re used today were basically invented through restaurant processes where you have large quantities of ingredients and importantly, meat scraps like trimmings bones and carcasses coming through daily on a predictable schedule.
You can get really good powdered stocks too, if they were shitty that would be another story but if you find a restaurant supplier with specialty foods in bulk they likely have a good stock option. I got a pail of dehydrated mushrooms from the same supplier here in Canada and they have the fancy spices and all that too, different saffron varieties even.
Never made any before but broth doesn’t seem worth it unless you make a big batch, even then I don’t have the room for a big ass pot or a gallon of broth in my fridge/freezer.
It’s not hard, or overly time consuming, assuming you’re making it from scraps you’ve already cooked.
If you’re setting out to make it from scratch, it’s expensive and a waste of time/fuel.
Beef/chicken/vegi stock, totally. I have to drive 65 miles to the closest store that sells pork stock, but I can get pork bones from my local butcher, so it’s absolutely worth it to make my own pork stock for home made hot and sour soup.
65 mi? Damn you put the edge in edge case.
Interesting never heard of hot and sour soup using pork broth. Everywhere around here is beef or chicken.
There was a Chinese restaurant in town when I was growing up that used pork stock and I’ve never had hot and sour soup as good as his. Sadly he retired in 2015 and shut down the restaurant.
I just don’t get enough scraps for how much I cook with stock. I’ll have a couple ziplocks of bones and veg and roast them, then boil, deglaze the roasting pans into the pot, boil, boil, reduce, reduce… great now I can make… a few servings of soup, a cup of concentrate for sauces.
There are a couple of things that make this easier :
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Concentrate it.
My broth/stock hack is to just get a bulk canister of dehydrated stock powder marketed to restaurants, you can find perfectly acceptable quality-wise for any use at home and its consistent. I do save things for making soups but come on… you’re not gonna get a quantity that’s worth all the effort if you’re just going through the food you’d eat at home. These ingredients how they’re used today were basically invented through restaurant processes where you have large quantities of ingredients and importantly, meat scraps like trimmings bones and carcasses coming through daily on a predictable schedule.
Yeah, my go-to is the powder because I can easily make a quart or a gallon right before I need it instead of 24 hrs before.
You can get really good powdered stocks too, if they were shitty that would be another story but if you find a restaurant supplier with specialty foods in bulk they likely have a good stock option. I got a pail of dehydrated mushrooms from the same supplier here in Canada and they have the fancy spices and all that too, different saffron varieties even.
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