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Introduction to Making Stock (continued)

Your stock should simmer gently for as long as possible, I give mine at least a 12 hour day but you can cook them for longer. Make sure you skim any froth and scum off the top. After a long day cooking the bones will become chalky and much of the vegetable matter will have partly dissolved. You will know when your stock is ready and full of gelatine as it will set into a jelly overnight in the fridge. You will also find that all the fat settles in a layer on the surface which can easily be removed.

Any meat you remove from the bones can be used in the soup, or cooked further with vegetables and home made gravy and made into lovely pies and pasties. Further edible portions such as stringy meat, sinew and cartilage we feed to our dogs. Very little goes to waste.

It is certainly worth the little time it takes to make your own stock. While we use it in all sorts of cooking one of the most valuable things you can make is soup. There is usually soup of one sort or another in our refrigerator. It makes a wonderful nourishing snack between meals, is unbeaten with crusty bread for lunch or dinner -and has even been eaten for breakfast. We found that while there was soup in our fridge our teenage children were happy to eat this instead of artificial cuppa-soups and other high fat, high sugar snacks and meals. It is quick and easy to reheat and so the time you put into making one pot of stock saves you a great deal of time through the busy week.


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