Snow Equals Soup Stock

Despite the effects of global warming, we could not put off winter forever. Today is the year's first snow day, schools closed, wind howling, wood stove radiating that wonder bone-soaking warmth. It is, of course, the perfect day to make soup stock.

I throw all my onion peels and ends, carrot ends, celery leaves, fresh herb stems, and the like into large freezer bags and toss them in the freezer for months on end. I don't include many brassicas -- cabbage, broccoli etc. -- because I find they give my stock a bitter taste, but some people don't mind them. I also have to remind myself to go easy on including the hot pepper bits...

When the right day arrives, when the wood stove will be cranking away all day and night, I pull out my largest stockpot, pour a coating of vegetable oil in the bottom, and dump in the frozen veggie scraps. I throw a little sea salt in on the theory it will help break down the veggies and get them to melt faster (not sure if it's true or not, it just seems appropriate), put the lid on the pot, and set it on the wood stove. I let the veggies thaw, then cook down until they are good and brown and stewing in their own juices.

Then I add fresh water enough to just cover the veggies by about a half-inch, put the lid back on and let this simmer away, usually overnight. I check the pot from time to time and add water back up to this level if necessary. Eventually when the stock seems nice and rich, I take the pot off the woodstove and set it on the stove to cool until it can be safely handled.

Pour the stock off through a colander into another stock pot -- but be sure to remember the other stock pot! I'm so used to pouring things into the colander to recover the veggies, not the liquid, that I have to admit I've poured a batch or two of stock down the drain then wondered why I was standing there with a colander full of bedraggled remains of overcooked vegetables.

After squeezing all the liquid out of the vegetable corpses and depositing them in the compost, I usually run the stock back through a finer mesh strainer, or even cheesecloth for a very clear stock. Then I freeze it in two-quart square freezer containers, as this seems to be the right size for most of my batch soup recipes, but I'll also put some in pint or even small cup or half-cup containers for making gravy or thinning down sauces or any number of other recipe uses.

I sometimes make special, more specific stocks like a tomato stock or, when I can find a large batch of nearly-gone-by mushrooms on sale at my local food co-op, a mushroom stock. My vegetarianism does have occasional lapses into pescetarianism, and I have been known to make a fish stock to ensure that I responsibly use up all the leftover bits and bones from a once-or-twice a year fish-grilling event, or if a friend has been fishing (I toss the rest of the fish waste or the post-stock remains into the compost). I also save the canning liquid left over from salsa making and can or freeze that up as stock for chili making.

But in today's howling snow, it's plain old mixed-freezer-vegetable stock, which will hold me through a winter's worth of soups worthy of other, bigger snowstorms yet to come.