Soup? I have soup

[SeaCat]

You think you're in the soup? Let me tell you.

This morning was clean out the freezer time. Out came a couple of bags of bones which were promptly dumped into the stock pot.

Beef Bones, Pork Bones, (Three of them) and Chicken Bones.

In the pot went a bunch of water followed by a handfull of dried Chili's.

Digging through the fridge to see what else was in there to use. Hmmmm, a couple of Onions. One was chopped and dumped in the pot while the other was set to the side. Garlic, cool. An entire bulb was skinned and chopped before ending up in the pot. Hmmmm, left over Liverwurst Soup. Toss that in and let it cook down. Some old slices of ham not yet bad as well as some leftover smoked Beef.

All of this went into the pot as well as a couple of galsses of cheap wine my wife hadn't finished off. Turn on the heat and let it cook.

Cook it did for the entire day. (When we left to go to the meetings in the hospital and do some shopping it was covered tightly with the heat off.) Slowly the extra water boiled off.

A short while ago I turned off the heat. I let it sit on the stove top until it was cool enough to handle easily. Then I slowly and carefully ladeled it off, pouring it through a coffee filter into one quart containers. Six of these containers are now filled with a nice clear dark brown broth in the bottom of the fridge chilling. Tomorrow morning I'll pull them one at a time from the fridge, pop the grease caps off and transfer them to the freezer.

Soup? I have soup.

Cat

 

[john-the-author]

Ooooooooh, Manything Soup! It sounds great. And you have a much cleaner freezer as a result.

 

[SeaCat]

Ooooooooh, Manything Soup! It sounds great. And you have a much cleaner freezer as a result.

Manything Soup? I like that name. We used to call it Dump It or Potluck Soup.

I have this habit that drives people nuts. At the end of a meal if what we have been eating had bones in it then the bones are collected and stored in a freezer bag in the freezer. We talking almost anything goes into that bag. Steak and other Beef Bones. Chicken Bones. Ham Bones. (I do draw the line on Fish Bones though.) The more meat on them the happier I am. If at the end of the meal we happen to have some leftover meat, but not enough for a meal or a snack that too goes into the bag. (Yes I have even been known to put Bacon in the bag.) This bag is called the Soup Bag. It all gets dumped into the pot.

My mother in law saw me making stock one time. She couldn't imagine why I was straining/filtering it when I was pouring it into the containers. This just didn't make sense to her. At least it didn't until she saw the many uses I had for the clear stock. (Not to mention just how much stock I made.)

Now take this stock I made today. By the time it is done it will have almost no grease in it and it will be fairly concentrated. I have six quarts of it. Each one of those quarts needs to be cut with water to make palatable soup. From one quart I can make half a gallon of soup. Then again you also have to understand that this stock started out as all of the ingredients mentioned above as well as more than three gallons of water. Not only does it cook, it cooks down and concentrates.

Cat

 

[john-the-author]

I don't know where the name "Manything Soup" came from. I may have coined it decades ago, but I rather think not. No matter.

I agree with you about a good, strained clear stock. There is a ton of things one can do with it. Having good frozen stock on hand is enormously handy.

 

[SeaCat]

I don't know where the name "Manything Soup" came from. I may have coined it decades ago, but I rather think not. No matter.

I agree with you about a good, strained clear stock. There is a ton of things one can do with it. Having good frozen stock on hand is enormously handy.

I still like the name.

The thing about my stock is it has flavor. As I mentioned above I typicaly add things like Garlic, Onion and Chili's.

I often have people ask me why I make stock and I just smile. Then I ask them if they have tasted the stock you can buy in the stores. Talk about a metalic taste. Then I let them try mine.

Here's another hint if you use a lot of stock. When you decide to make chicken, either grilled, broiled or baked. Toss that chicken into a pot of water and parboil it for several minutes. Not only will your chicken turn out more tender and juicier than you are used to but you now have a pot of stock. (I usually set the pot of water to the side then add the bones as well as spices later to make the stock a bit stronger.)

Cat