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Comment by phyzome | Hacker News Reader

What I don't like about stock is that you end up throwing out food. (How much of that is indigestible fiber, and how much is nutritive? Not sure, but I suspect the latter is a large portion of the waste...)

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It's actually the opposite of that. You use bits of stuff you have left over -- ends from vegetables, chicken carcasses, etc... Throw all that stuff in the freezer instead of throwing it away and use it for stock later.

I guess that's true if you end up with a lot of trimmings. I was thinking of storebought, which... actually, could be made from scraps and other things that wouldn't otherwise be used.

In my own situation, I just wouldn't have enough vegetable trimmings to make stock -- I use the whole vegetable when I cook! For example, I never cut carrot tips off, and I only cut off the black part of the top, which is tiny and wouldn't really go in stock anyhow. Same kind of situation for celery, onions, peppers...

Yeah the advice to "use trimmings!" seems very based in a restaurant situation where (a) lots of vegetables are getting prepped regularly and (b) cutting techniques are based on the goals of speed and uniform product, so you'll see things like squaring up a vegetable into a cuboid before dicing it... which produces "scraps" that aren't wasted, because they can go into a stock!

it's pretty likely that storebought stock is made with 'unattractive' produce that wouldn't otherwise sell, like how tomato sauce is made with ugly or bruised tomatoes.

Very true. I used to always obsess about getting every last little bit of meat off the carcass when I made chicken or turkey stock, but I've since realized that that meat is so dry and tasteless that it doesn't really matter. All the good stuff is in the liquid.

A one gal plastic bag in my freezer fully stuffed with vegetable odds and ends will yield about 2-3 quarts stock when processed with my 6L pressure cooker. I will add seasoning and fill the water to the max line, then strain while it's hot after the cook.

US units are fun :)

Mixing units is funnier.

Just a quick note: a pressure cooker is going to be hot enough to destroy some aromatic flavor compounds found in many ingredients, like onion and garlic. It depends on the types of veg you use for stock, but I've had better luck leaving it in a pot for several hours on the lowest heat—it's almost an infusion as opposed to a traditional "stock", but I find that I get way more nuanced flavor out of it that way.

For many recipes there's no need to strain. You can just leave the veg in. For example, with tomatoes and herbs it makes a delicious pasta sauce. Related:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirepoix

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_trinity_(cooking)

> What I don't like about stock is that you end up throwing out food.

I have the perfect solution for this. Keep a container in the freezer. Whenever you have an extra unusable vegetable bit from chopping, chuck it in the container. Once the container is full, simmer a big pot with all the bits for 30-45 minutes then strain all the solids.

Good veggie bits to use: onion skins and butts, garlic bits, broccoli stems, carrot greens or butts, celery leaves or those hard bottoms, kale stems, chard stems (although they can really color the stock), asparagus stems, fennel bits, the green leek leaves,

Bad veggie bits, don't use (adds weird/too much flavor): any nightshade bits (bell peppers, tomatoes, eggplant etc), green bean or peadpod tops, squashes, cucumber, zucchini.

Haven't tried other veggies.

Also avoid turnip/sweet potato skins/unpeeled turnips or sweet potatoes, beets and beet skins, cabbage and Brussels sprouts like plants, dark leafy greens like collard and mustard. Zucchini should be fine tho

Celery leaves are actually delicious torn into salads or garnish on a stir fry. And broccoli stalks can be sliced and roasted or shaved into a salad.

It’s a great addition to the compost heap though!

ETA: shouldn’t use normally edible parts to make stock. Only like the tips and tails of carrots, celery root balls, onion peels… I keep a gallon ziplock in the freezer that accumulates these as I cook other things. When it’s full I usually make chicken stock.

How do you get enough carrots if you're just using tips/tails? Or do you supplement that with whole carrots?

I cook for a 5 persons household, and I fill 4 to 5 1L Ziplock bags with vegetable peels, tips/tails and other "garbage", which I then turn into 1 to 2L of stock. We also eat a lot of pasta, and I make sure to keep the "skin" of parmeggiano or grana padano we eat, and throw it in there as well.

If you try it, you will likely be surprised by how mich usually gets thrown away.

Nope I just use whatever is in the bag, I don’t care too much about the ratio. But we try to eat lots of carrot/celery sticks for snacks, and I regularly cook things with mirepoix so there’s not exactly a dearth of them.

You can also "splurge" and make a veggie stock using whole ingredients; for example, I use whole fresh celery, carrots, peppers, onions, and garlic. It's like $5 of ingredients.

You're not throwing out flavor, though. It's the same thing with braises: you generally want two sets of veg, one (very roughly chopped, to make it easy to pull) to braise with, and one (presentation cut) to finish with. After a log cook, vegetable matter is just soggy fiber.

That's close to how I do osso bucco, yeah: finely diced vegetables that go in at the start and will become part of the sauce, plus more attractive larger chunks when there's about 40 minutes left.

Soggy fibre is a good thing in these cases because it thickens the sauce and doesn't draw attention away from the meat and the larger veg chunks.

I prefer the peasant version: Don't be so precious about finely chopping, straining, and pureeing. Just throw your delicious ingredients together and eat all of the resulting stew/broth/chili/shabu shabu.

normally stock is made with scraps... for example I will buy a whole rotisserie chicken and then after eating all the flesh, use the remaining carcass for the stock, and then throw it away (no vegetables!)

If I'm making chicken stock the resulting vegetables don't have to be thrown away, but they aren't super appetizing- a mushy texture and not much flavor. Typically it's less than $5 of vegetables, like celery, carrots, onion and garlic. Not clear it's even worth saving given you extracted all the goodness into the stock.

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