Reduce food waste, save money: Stock

Making stock is a great way to use up vegetables before they go off. Making stock also allows you to get extra nutrients out of your vegetable scraps and to add extra flavour to your cooking. Stock can be used in soups, curries, stews, stir fries, dhal, risotto and bakes. If you're cooking on a budget and have only quite simple ingredients adding stock to a meal can add real interest and intensity of flavour and if you use your vegetable scraps it comes at virtually no cost.

What can you add to the stock pot?

• Any vegetables that have gone a bit soft and bendy in the bottom of the fridge can be made into stock. Don't add bits that have turned brown and mushy, but it is perfectly safe to cut these bits off and use the rest of the vegetable. Be aware that some vegetables have strong flavours which can really dominate the stock if you add a large quantity e.g. cabbage.

• Vegetable skins and peelings such as carrot, pumpkin, potato, onion and garlic skins. Just make sure that you give the skin a good scrub before removing it.

• Bones from meat e.g. the leftovers from a roast chicken.

• Fresh herbs and greens from the garden will add lots of nutrients and lovely flavour to your stock.

• Vegetable stalks e.g. silverbeet. spinach, beetroot (will turn your stock pink!), broccoli or cauliflower stalks.

• Other bits and pieces e.g. the centre, seeds and membrane of capsicums, tops of zucchinis, tops and tails of green beans, shells of peas, leaves of beetroot and celery.

Top stock making tips

• A good idea is to keep a container in your fridge to put your vegetable scraps in throughout the week. Once it is full put all the scraps in a large soup pot with plenty of water. Depending on what scraps you have you may like to add an extra onion or two and some carrot or celery for extra flavour plus any herbs or spices that take your fancy.

• Keep an eye on your stock and top it up with extra water if it gets low, otherwise you'll end up with a pot of mushy vegetables and no stock.

• A lot of vegetables can become bitter if overcooked so once your stock comes to the boil it's a good idea to simmer it for only about 45 minutes.

• The smaller you chop your vegetables/scraps the quicker they will release their flavour. This can be a labour intensive process though, so decide how much chopping is worthwhile for you.

• Once your stock has done simmering, strain it and decant into containers. Allow to cool to room temperature before placing in the fridge or freezer. Stock will keep for months in the freezer but only 4-5 days in the fridge so even if you think you're likely to use it in the next few days it can be a good idea to freeze it just in case you forget and all you hard stock-making work is wasted.

• Once you've drained your stock the resulting vegetable mush is a great addition to your compost or warm farm.

Image taken from here.