Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World (7 page)

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Vegetable Stock

PREPARATION:
40 min

Stock makes everything taste better. It makes good use of singleton vegetables and scraps that might go to waste otherwise and, in the case of meat, allows you to extract every bit of nutrition from leftovers and bones. If you have stock on hand, you can make good soup fast. Stock also lends flavor and nutrients to beans and grains and sautés. A warm cup of stock on its own is an excellent pick-me-up. So the first task in weekly cooking is to make sure you’re stocked up on stock.

Gather sound vegetable trimmings during the week and keep them in the fridge or freezer for cooking day. Don’t save anything bruised or rotten, but vegetable tops and trimmings, peels of scrubbed vegetables, leftover onion halves, and the like can all be set aside for a new life. You can include almost any vegetable in your stock, including potatoes, mushrooms, and tomatoes. The only questionable vegetables are members of the Brassica family—strong-flavored vegetables like cabbage and mustard greens that can dominate the flavor of your stock. Use them sparingly.

Stock is an improvisational process, but a classic vegetable stock is composed of onion, carrots, celery, garlic, and fresh herbs. To this base, add anything else you have lying around.

YOU’LL NEED

• 1 onion
  
• 2 stalks celery
  
• 2 carrots
  
• 1 clove garlic
  
• Olive oil
  
• 1 bay leaf
  
• Other vegetable scraps or singletons you have on hand and fresh herbs like parsley and thyme (optional)
  
• Sea salt and black pepper
  

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

Coarsely chop the onion, celery, carrots, and garlic. In the bottom of a stockpot, heat a little olive oil. Add the vegetables and the bay leaf and cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes, until softened. At this point, throw in any additional vegetables or herbs, also coarsely chopped, and cover with a generous amount of water. Bring it to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes total. Add salt and freshly ground pepper to taste as it cooks. After a half hour, the vegetables will have given over most of their goodness and flavor to the broth. Strain the stock into a storage container and keep it in the fridge, or use it immediately for other cooking projects.

Stock keeps for a week in the refrigerator. You can also freeze it for later use.

ROASTED VEGETABLE VARIATION

If you want a vegetable stock with more depth of flavor, preroast your vegetables. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Toss coarsely chopped vegetables in olive oil, salt, and pepper. Lots of roasted garlic is the key to the rich flavor, so include an entire unpeeled head of garlic. Cut off the top, so that the end of each clove is open. Put the head of garlic and all of the vegetables in a roasting pan and roast for about an hour, or until tender. Give them a couple of stirs as they roast so they brown evenly. When the vegetables are tender, transfer them to a stockpot, reserving the head of garlic. Squeeze each clove of garlic over the stockpot to release all the yummy roasted paste inside. Fill the pot with water, add fresh herbs like thyme and parsley, bring to a simmer, and cook for another half hour, stirring occasionally. Strain out the solids.

16>

Whole Chicken Stock

PREPARATION:
4 hours

If you’re a meat eater, nothing beats chicken stock. It lends savor to everything it’s cooked with and forms the basis of comforting chicken soups, sauces, and gravies. Nowadays, when most of our meat comes precut and wrapped in plastic, we’ve forgotten about bones—not to mention knuckles and whole heads—but these parts are the basis of good stock, both in terms of flavor and nutrient value.

Gelatin-rich stock was once considered a healing food, and it still should be. A bone-based broth is rich in calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, protein, and all that good stuff that helps sick people get better and healthy people stay well. Meat stock also allows us to put every part of an animal to good use, which is not only practical but a mark of respect for the animal that gave its life to feed us.

The following recipe is a good use for a chicken deemed too old and tough for roasting. This is a very basic stock. Feel free to add more seasoning, but remember the stock can be seasoned later, in its final applications. This recipe will produce a rich, gelatinous stock and a supply of stew meat for other dishes.

YOU’LL NEED

• 1 large onion
  
• 2 stalks celery
  
• 2 carrots
  
• 2-3 peeled cloves garlic (optional)
  
• 1 whole free-range chicken (3-4 pounds)
  
• 2 tablespoons vinegar, any sort
  
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
  
• A few grinds of black pepper
  
• Sprig of thyme
  
• 1 cup chopped parsley
  

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

Chop the onion, celery, and carrots into 1-inch chunks. The garlic cloves can be left whole.

Rinse the chicken inside and out. Cut off the wings and legs and divide the legs into drumsticks and thighs. You don’t have to be tidy. The neck is fair game for stock, as are the gizzards and even the feet, if you have them and wish to use them. Use the skin, too.

In a stainless steel pot with a 6- to 8-quart capacity, add the chicken pieces, chopped vegetables, garlic, vinegar, salt, pepper, and thyme. Cover with cold water, about 4 quarts, and bring to a boil. Skim off all scum that rises to the top. Put a lid on the pot, turn down the heat, and simmer for 4 hours. Yes, 4 whole hours! After 2 hours, check the condition of the meat. If it’s falling off the bone, fish the carcass out of the pot and pick it clean. The meat can be set aside for soups, tacos, salads, etc. You do this halfway through, rather than at the end, to prevent the meat from overcooking. If the chicken was a tough old bird, it might need the full 4 hours of cooking. Once the meat is picked off, return the bones and skin to the simmering stock.

Add the parsley in the last 15 minutes of cooking.

Strain the stock while it is still hot by passing it through a colander to catch the bones and spent vegetables. The finer the strainer, the cleaner the stock. Add more salt and pepper to taste, if necessary.

Put the hot stock in the fridge to cool. As it cools, most of the fat will rise to the top in a solid, white layer. Remove that layer with a spoon and transfer it to a lidded container and store in the fridge or freezer. This can be used as a flavorful cooking fat, so shouldn’t be wasted. It shouldn’t be left in the stock, either, because it will give it a greasy mouth-feel. When cool, the stock will turn gelatinous. This is exactly how it should be. That gelatin is the nutritious legacy of the bones and the hallmark of real meat stock. Transfer the stock to smaller containers to freeze for later use.

17>

How to Cook Beans

PREPARATION: 15-60+ min

If the only beans you’re acquainted with come from a can, you’re in for a treat. Home-cooked beans are not only creamy and savory, they’re also a cheap, versatile superfood. Beans are high in fiber and low in sugar and have the caloric density of meat. This magic combination of low sugar, high fiber, and high calories means that a meal of beans keeps you satisfied and on an even keel for a long time.

Even better, they’re full of healthy antioxidants. Cook up a pot of beans on the weekend and use them all week long. One day they might be in a salad, the next day they’re tossed with pasta, a third day they’re in soup or pureed into a dip or rolled up in burritos. Beans are nothing if not versatile.

YOU’LL NEED

• Dried beans, such as black beans, kidney beans, lentils, and split peas (When deciding how many beans to use, keep in mind that beans triple in volume when they’re soaked and cooked.)
  
• Water
  
• Sea salt and black pepper
  

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

Beans have a bad rap as being hard to cook. That’s not true. They’re just misunderstood.

TO SOAK OR NOT TO SOAK

Dried beans don’t have to be soaked before cooking, although presoaking makes the cooking time a little shorter. The downside to soaking is that oversoaked beans turn mushy in cooking. Never soak beans for more than 12 hours. Eight is ideal. So if you want beans for dinner, set them out to soak before you go to work in the morning, not the night before. Small beans, like lentils or split peas, don’t need to be soaked.

To soak beans, pour some beans into a bowl. Run your fingers through the beans and make sure you don’t see any tiny pebbles or other foreign matter. Give the beans a quick rinse and then fill the bowl with three times more water than beans. Soak for 8 hours.

COOKING

Drain the presoaked beans. If the beans haven’t been presoaked, sort through and rinse before cooking. Put either type into a big, heavy-bottom pot. Cover unsoaked beans with 3 inches of cold water; cover presoaked beans with 2 inches of water. Bring the pot to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, partially covered, for as long as it takes.

The older the beans, the longer they need to cook. It’s hard to tell how old beans are just by looking at them. You might be able to see beans chipping or crumbling: These are hints that they’re old. This doesn’t mean they’re bad—dried beans have an almost indefinite shelf life—it just means they’ll take longer to cook. Generally speaking, unsoaked beans take anywhere between half an hour and 2 hours to cook. The shorter cooking time is for small beans like lentils. Larger dried beans, like black beans or kidney beans, cook in about an hour if they’re fresh but could take 2 hours if they’re old. Presoaked beans generally take about 45 minutes to an hour. It’s hard to generalize, because freshness varies so much.

All this means you have to resign yourself to a variable cooking time. For this reason, it’s good to prepare beans on your cooking day, when you’ll be in the kitchen anyway and can keep your eye on them. Let your beans simmer, and check them every 15 minutes. All you have to do is make sure the water doesn’t boil off. As long as you keep them covered in water and the heat steady, they’ll get done. Taste for tenderness. When you think they’re getting close—when they’re soft enough to bite but still a bit crunchy—add salt and pepper to the water. Salting too soon makes the skins tough, so it’s best to add salt in the last 15 minutes or so. When they’re tender, drain off the excess water.

Refrigerate cooked beans in a covered container for up to a week.