Making soup

The older I get, the less I like winter.  Give me a nice warm beach in the tropics and I'm happy. 

The one thing that kinda gets me through is making soup  (that and seed catalogs, which as my good friend Lin pointed out today are starting to arrive in the mailbox--woohoo!!!!!!--doesn't take much to get me excited!).  Good homemade soup is so easy to make and so much healthier and tastier and CHEAPER than canned supermarket soup.  Cheap is always good.  And by Cheap, I mean almost free...your basic soup stock is made almost entirely of garbage! Pennies per bowl really.  And I love cheap--I'm constantly looking for bargains, bogo's, sales...I think I'm on all the web points sites (swagbucks especially rocks!) and was able to amass a few hundred dollars of gift cards for Christmas this year for doing nothing more than doing searches through certain websites, going through certain sites before I make online purchases, etc.  I'm sure I'll post more on that in the future, but for now let's get back to soup.

My first rule is never, never, NEVER throw away bones.  Chicken bones, beef bones, ham bones, shrimp shells (kinda bones), you name it--DON'T throw them away!!!  They are FREE food--can't beat free!  You know that thing going around on facebook about wanting to drug test people before they get welfare benefits?  Well, I think they need to garbage-test them.  No food stamps if you have bones in your garbage that haven't been souped yet.  If you don't have time to make soup (and that's the one drawback--good soup stock needs to simmer all day, but then again isn't that why God make crock pots???), freeze the bones for later. 

When you're ready,  fill a big pot with water (I use a big pasta pot, you know the kind with the insert you stick the pasta in, so it's easy to lift out of the water when it's done?) Well, those things work GREAT to lift out all of the bones and stuff leaving you with the broth and eliminating the need to strain everything into a different pot, but you can still do that, it's not that hard).  If you're using beef bones, roast them in the oven first--maybe about a half hour at 400 degrees F.  I usually drizzle them with a little olive oil and roast some veggies (tomatoes, carrots, garlic cloves, onions) with them too....just watch them and when they're brown they're ready.   Any other bones you can throw right into the water in the pot. 

So, once you have your bones in the water (and no, you don't have to clean the little scraps of meat, fat, or gristle off--just throw it all in there!), you can add other things to flavor the broth (these things will be thrown out and are not part of the finished soup--they are only in there to give the broth more flavor and nutrients).  The good thing is you can throw in more garbage!!!  Those celery leaves on the top of the stalks you usually throw out?  Keep them and throw them in the water!  onion skins? Yup, throw them in too. I usually throw in a few stalks of celery, a few carrots, and a few slices of onions (you only have to chop them in a couple pieces)--If you don't have one or all of these, don't stress, your broth will still be good!  I will also throw in a small handful of peppercorns, a few sprigs of fresh thyme, and a bay leaf for good measure, but again whatever you have on hand will be fine (trust me!) 

Bring all to a boil then cover and simmer for at least 2-3 hours (or longer--the longer the better!).  If you're doing it in a crock pot, set it to low for 6-8 hours.  After it's done strain out the solids and there you have it: good, healthy, no-salt (unless you boiled a ham bone then it'll be salty but less salty the more water you use), low fat, nutritious, CHEAP soup broth!  Then just use the broth in whatever soup recipe you want to make.  (I promise, I'll post some general ideas in the future!)  Or just drink a mug of it plain (great for colds!)  Or freeze in 1 or 2 cup portions to use at a later date.  I sometimes even freeze it in ice cube trays for recipes that only call for a little bit of stock. 

So that's the basic idea--if I can figure out how to link back to this in future posts, I will, so that when I say "start with chicken broth" or "ham broth" or whatever you'll know how I get to that.  Sure, you can use store-bought, but this is so much better (and CHEAPER, oh and did I mention how incredibly awesome the house smells when you make this???) 

So when life gives you garbage, make soup!!