TODAY’S GREEN
MANTRA: “I can turn garbage into
delicious gold (coloured vegetable stock)”
Day 57 / 365
Faye,
one of my fellow Ethical Writer’s Coalition members who writes a beautiful blog
called Sustaining Life (*check her blog out it is lovely!) has kindly shared her
delicious money and earth friendly recipe for Kitchen Scrap Vegetable Stock.
For
many of us who live in apartments in big cities like Paris (where I live) or New York (where Faye lives), composting isn’t a
logistically viable option. We tried composting in the little tomato garden on
our terrace but it quickly turned into a potential rat lure, so we shut it down
and have been regrettably binning all our compostables that can’t be used for dying ever since. (if anyone in Paris knows a solution to our problem, please advise in
the comments below!)
At this point in our venture towards a zero waste kitchen, our ‘garbage bag’ food scraps from food preparation
so a recipe which can utilize my waste and avoid processed store bought veggie
stock peaked my interest and I had to give it a try.
Faye
didn’t lie. It works like a charm.
time: 1.5-2.5 hours
[INGREDIENTS]
– 1
gallon zip-loc bag full of scraps
– 64+
oz of water (use your to-be stock container to measure, then add a cup of
water)
– 2
tbsp olive oil
– 2
tbsp salt
– 1
tbsp pepper
– additional
desired spices (coriander, bay leaves, cayenne pepper, cumin…)
[DIRECTIONS]
scraps over time, store in the freezer. When your bag is full, you’re ready for
a stock day!
your scrap bag into a baking pan or dutch oven. Sprinkle with salt, pepper
and other spices then drizzle with olive oil
oven for 20-30 minutes.
now is the time to transfer your roasted scraps into a large pot. Fill
your pot or dutch oven with enough water to cover the now-roasted scraps, which
should be just a bit more than the amount of liquid that will fit in your stock
container.
6. Bring the water to a
boil, then cover and let simmer for at least an hour and up to two. Avoid
letting it simmer for much longer than two hours as the extra time can cause
the flavors to cook off, leaving you with a dully flavored stock.
7. After simmering for 1-2
hours, take pot off the heat and let cool until you can safely touch the
vegetables without burning yourself. Then, with a large bowl and colander,
start to strain the stock from the scraps. You will probably have to do this in
a few batches as the bowl will fill up and make a mess. Toss (or, ideally,
compost) the used vegetable scraps and transfer your strained stock into its
designated container.
weeks if kept in a sealed container in the refrigerator. Add different
seasonings to mix up your flavors depending on the type of soup you are making
– I love using lemongrass to punch up the flavor for a Pho-inspired noodle
soup. Though, I will often use my stock instead of water to simply cook rice or
roast vegetables as it rounds out the warm flavors really nicely.
I love this idea. Thanks for the tip!
Thanks Kendall ❤️