There is something tremendously homey and comfortable in the
aroma of chicken stock simmering away in the crockpot or on top of the stove. Knowing that I was going
to make the copycat recipe for Panera's Chicken and Wild Rice Soup, the first
thing I did this morning upon arising (before I had coffee, so you understand
the importance of this), was to put the components of chicken stock into the
crockpot so that it could cook on low all day. This was incredibly easy to do.
First of all, I had gotten a rotisserie chicken from the market this past week.
The chicken was a bit on the anorexic side, but it still had wonderful skin and
bones, the key to a great start. I had also been saving vegetable scraps in a
marked bag in the freezer just for the occasion. This post is about those scraps.
The next time you find yourself cutting onions, carrots, celery, fennel, leeks, or herbs, don't discard the scraps. Instead, grab a zipper-topped freezer bag,
mark it as "stock scraps," and place all of them inside. Put that bag into the
freezer, and continue to add to it until the bag is full. At that point, you
can either make stock (if you happen to have a chicken on hand, or not, if you simply want vegetable stock), or you can
start a new bag.
From here on out, when the time comes for you to make chicken stock for use in
whatever recipe you happen to be planning, you are going to be so
glad that you have a bag of stock vegetables handy. I cannot abide food
waste, so try to use as much of an item as I can. It makes me feel good to save
these vegetable scraps rather than throw them away (I no longer have space to
compost), and it makes life just so darn easy.
Use only the best quality vegetables in order to
yield the best quality scraps.
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