Making your own broth is easy as fuck and way fucking healthier.
I see lots I see lots of posts from people my age wondering how to cook things and a lot of people seemed to appreciate my "How to Make Hard Boiled Eggs" post. So here's another easy tip.
How to Make Your Own Broth!! Store bought broth is expensive and full of unhealthy and unnecessary shit like sodium and sugar. When I can, I make my own. It's easy, freezes well, and is better than anything from the store. The easiest way is to freeze kitchen scraps.
Veggie Broth: Gather vegetable scraps as you’re cooking. Any vegetable waste you’d normally throw away can go into a bag in the freezer. Some of the things I’ve collected: onion skins and bottoms, celery stalks and leaves, wilted lettuce, mushrooms that were about to go bad, sweet potato skins, potato skins, ciltantro stalks, carrot tops and skins, pepper seeds and bottoms, garlic skin. Basically, anytime you’re making something with vegetables or herbs and you think, “Alright let’s get all this and throw it away,” Put it in a freezer bag instead. When the bag is full, pour the vegetables in a slow cooker. Then fill the cooker about halfway with water and turn on low for about 5 hours. Strain all the vegetables and boom! I made this today and got 9 cups of broth!! 9 CUPS! and it’s basically free because you make it with stuff you were gonna trash. *Be careful with the onions. I’ve added too much onion skin before the broth was too oniony. I also use whole carrots for my broth and fresh garlic (+skins) when I cook it. I like carrots and I like garlic.*
Meat broth: Cook meat or buy cooked meat. Sometimes I’ll buy a rotessire chicken as a cheap and easy dinner then use the bones and stuff that night. If there’s a ham, I’ll freeze the bone till I’m ready to use it. Freeze the bones, fat drippings, or skin that you’d normally toss. Throw in crockpot with frozen vegetables, fill the pot halfway with water and turn on low for about 5 hours. Strain meat broth twice. Once to get all the chunks, second to get all the weird fat bits.
I promise you, your broth will be tastier and healthier. I always add the salt as I’m eating or cooking the other thing, not while I’m cooking the broth. Once you have a broth, you can make anything, like an easy soup: cook noodles, cook a potato, and cook a bag of steam-in-bag veggies with no sauce. Add to your broth and enjoy. Another fun thing is to put the broth in ice cube trays and you’ve got a couple of tablespoons of flavor ready for any dish. Fresh broth keeps in the fridge for longer and freezes easily in bulk. :D
