Making Stock & Taking Stock

In all my "Soup on Saturdays" posts, I've been remiss in not mentioning the key to great soup: homemade stock.  It seems like such a simple thing, but I think it's an culinary art form that has been somewhat lost.  It's not hard, and if you haven't been doing it, just try it once and see the difference it makes in your soups.  I bet you won't go back to store-bought stock again!

First, take bones.  Beef bones or chicken bones.  Preferably with some good hunks of meat left on them!  Place them in the biggest pot you have.

Add at least 3 onions, 3 or 4 carrots, as much garlic as you can handle (I do at least 5 cloves), some celery, and fresh cold water.  (If I use a roasted chicken carcass, I include the roasted onions and garlic from the roasting pan, too, which makes the stock AMAZING.)  Some people put herbs into the mix, but I don't bother.  For me, this simple base works so well, that I'm afraid adding too much would ruin the magic.

Place on the stove to boil.  When the nasty bubbles (brown if it's chicken stock or blackish if it's beef stock) come to the surface, skim them off.  Apparently they spoil the stock.  Not to mention it just looks gross, and who wants to eat that???!!!

Yuck.

Turn the heat down to a low simmer.  Cover.  Now here's the secret.  Simmer for at LEAST 24 hours.  I know that seems ridiculous.  And like a fire hazard.  But I promise it isn't.  (I remember the very first time I made homemade stock.  We lived in Baltimore.  We had a gas stove.  I couldn't believe I was supposed to leave my gas stove on low all night.  So I woke up paranoid at least three times that first night to check on it.  The second time I made stock, I only woke up once.  By now, I'm fairly confident that I won't burn my house down.  And it helps that I have an electric stove!)  The long simmering time allows all the delicious marrow from the bones (the vitamin and mineral store-house!) to really permeate the soup.  It also makes a really RICH, dark broth.  If you check it at 12 hours, it won't be nearly as dark as it will at 24 hours, and the darkness is what you want.  The darkness is the flavor.  (Think of French Onion Soup, and how rich and dark the broth is....)

My finished beef stock.

Turn off the stove after 24 hours.  Let the stock cool down until you can safely ladle it into jars.  I freeze mine in old spaghetti sauce jars in 2 cup portions.  A large pot will make somewhere around 10-12 cups of broth, more or less.  With a few simple ingredients, you can provide yourself or your family with weeks, if not months of delicious soups!

It's not a difficult process, but it does need to be given time.  And as we approach the season of Advent, I'm reminded that pretty soon we will be 'waiting' in a very special way for the birth of Jesus.  I'm reminded that I need to step back and 'take stock' of my life and where I'm at mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually.  Advent is, after all, the official New Year of the Church, a time to start over, begin again, and experience a bit of our own rebirth.  (What a truly new year it will be with the new Roman Missal coming out!)

The way I see it, the entire purpose of Advent is to "prepare Him room."  I need to ask myself if my focus is enough on God or too much on the little things.  How easy and tempting it is to be distracted by all the Christmas shopping, baking and decorating!  While those things have a rightful place in the Christmas season, they shouldn't be the focus.  This Advent, I'd like to make the Sacrament of Reconciliation more of a priority in my life.  That nasty stuff rising to the surface of my soul soup needs to be scraped away too!  I'd like to try to make it to at least one additional weekly mass and take time out of my day for quite prayer time.  These are simple ingredients.  I dare say that too many more ingredients might spoil the magic, just as with the stock.  But they are are do-able with a bit of sacrifice and focus on the right things.