The Craftiest Workshop

I have been saving vegetable scraps now since the beginning of summer. I use a large freezer bag and collect scraps over time, saving them in the freezer. When I peel an onion, that stiff outer layer goes in the bag. When I cut the ends off carrots, they go into the bag. Bendy celery, tops of peppers, broccoli/cauliflower cores, and even the inner parts of lettuce. Once I have two bags mostly full, or my vegetable freezer drawer is getting too full, I decide to make broth.

I toss all the scraps into my steam juicer basket and add any vegetables from the freezer that have too much frost build up or bags that are almost empty.

I put it on the stove for an hour or two and I get a very strong vegetable broth for soup.

This time the combination was a bit different. I tossed in the slimy innards of my pumpkin and a bunch of kohlrabi leaves. There were tips and ends of the garden carrots plus any soft ones in the bunch. An entire bag of cabbage/kale/lettuce mixed salad that I had been saving for stir fry went in. I used some green onion because I had so much saved in the freezer and the last few celery going slimy from the fridge This would all be ending up in the composter so getting a bit of broth out of it first makes so much more sense.

The other thing I add is a whole head of garlic. I buy a big pack of garlic because it is cheaper and sometimes I don’t get through all of them before they end up sprouting. When my son Thomas was visiting he taught me the easy way to peel garlic. You lay the handle of your knife sideways on the garlic clove, push down until you hear the crack and the peel almost falls off. It works like my brother Russell’s gadget where you put the clove into a tube and roll it. Anyhow, I learned this trick about 30 years too late.

I forgot to take a photo of the broth right after cooking. It made 4 cups of broth with so much flavour. I put it in two yogurt containers, two cups in each. It will get used very soon so I am not worried about the extra space in the containers. I could have left it in the fridge but I wasn’t making soup in the next few days. Here it is after a night in the freezer.

You can do broth the old fashion way by just covering your veggie scraps with water, simmering and then straining afterwards. My mom also made broth, this way, in the past week. The taste might not be as concentrated as steamed broth but definitely worth it. You might as well put the scraps to work and get all the nutrition possible out of your veggie scraps.

I am veering off the subject path but I thought I would share another bit of cooking wisdom that Thomas passed on. He cooks for himself every day and usually cooks chicken breast. He has learned that when cooking chicken breast, you should do it in a covered frying pan and not in the oven. It retains so much more moisture. Always cooking for a family of five, I got used to using the oven. Now that we are just two again, using the frying pan for chicken makes more sense anyhow. I cut up some chicken breast, tried it and will never go back.

Maybe it is just that I have more time or that I find using the steam juicer so easy, but I know that I will continue to save my vegetable scraps for this purpose from now on. Even with my freezer full of apples and berries, I make sure there is enough space for those couple bags of veggie scraps. The taste of the broth is so worth it. For next time, I am toying with the idea of freezing the broth in ice cube trays. This way I could use it to flavour rice or maybe even pasta.