On cold days like today we like to put a pot on the stove to make broth. The smell makes the house seem warmer and the steam doesn’t hurt the low humidity caused by the furnace. I woke up today hungry for Savory Oats and found I’d used the last broth in the fridge earlier in the week. I could pull some out of the freezer but I know we have plenty of broth materials around the place.
A fair amount of broth recently has gone into my Savory Oats breakfast. I have been trying to work more whole grains into my diet, especially oats with soluble fibre since it’s got the reputation for scrubbing out arteries. Trouble is, I really don’t have a sweet tooth so the traditional bowl of oatmeal with brown sugar sets my molars on edge. I’ve started making what I call “Savory Oats.” Instead of plain water, I make the oats with broth, usually in the ratio of one cup oats to two cups of broth. If I’m feeling fancy, I’ll saute up some white onion or carrot in a bit of the broth but honestly, good steel cut oats are enough on their own. I use the “Quaker”-style quick oats in a pinch an they’re good too but the texture can so easily turn to glue. The essential ingredient for oats as I suppose for all food is to season it correctly. Our broth is naturally low sodium so a pinch or two of sea salt on the final bowl really brightens up the flavor.
So I’m making broth.
We’ve stumbled into the perfect set-up for broth but we made it pretty diligently even before we settled into our current equipment. We have a 3-gallon stainless steel pot with a clear lid and a deep basket that fits inside it. There’s also a much shallower basket for steaming. I suppose that this basket was designed for pasta, and we use it for that too, but it’s also a great place to put the materials for broth as we slowly simmer out their flavor-rich goodness. Previously we used a pot and then poured the broth through a strainer into another pot.
What goes into broth? I know a “foodie” will make the distinction between “broth” and “stock” – one contains bones – but the glory of our broth is that all items are welcome. It’s like the compost pile of the kitchen. This batch for instance has:
• raw chicken skin from some breasts,
• cooked chicken skin from a whole chicken we roasted,
• the bones of the roast chicken –
• the ends of the onions I’ve chopped up for the past couple weeks, minus the papery outer layers
• a small bag of carrots leftover from someone’s lunch
• that little bit of juice left from the roasting pan when we’re not making gravy
We save all these scraps in a Ziploc storage bag in the freezer door until it’s time for broth. Honestly, the materials are more likely kept in several bags. When I’m collecting the bits and pieces, it’s usually in the midst of making dinner or cleaning up, that is, it’s never the focal task at the moment. It’s more important that the scraps get saved than that they all get saved in the same bag. Keeping all the broth bags on the door makes them easier to find. Another note, don’t worry about discarding some material because it has too much fat. The fat has a lot of flavor and there’s a trick that helps get rid of it.
The other ingredient, of course, is water. Add just enough to cover the materials. I find it so heartbreaking when I’ve made a batch of broth that smells fantastic but that is over-diluted. I use cold water, not hot water. I suppose I could say there’s some kind of magical process where the water extracts different nutrients at different temperatures – might be true for all I know. But I’m thinking more that I don’t use the hot water from the tap for very much since before the water comes out hot, it’s got to warm up a fairly long length of copper pipe. Since I’m using the stove heat anyway, cold water is just fine.
Bring it all to a boil for a minute or two and then turn it down to a simmer. The boil is good to kill any bugs that might have hitched a ride on the leftovers but the long simmer will wipe them out as well. Within a couple minutes you’ll get a whiff of deliciousness. I usually keep a lid on the pot. Ideally, we’d let the pot simmer most of the day.
How do you know when it’s done? That’s the question indeed. There’s no point in rushing here. How much time do you have? If you absolutely have to go out, cover the pot, turn off the heat and go about your errands. If your business out in the world took you longer than you expected, that’s probably fine too. We’ve left half-finished broth (covered, mind you) on the back of the stove overnight and finished it off the next day. Your mileage may vary, ESPECIALLY if room temperature is warm due to climate or season. We’ve had a batch go sour when we tried to push things too much longer, but again we didn’t cry too hard because the ingredients were items most folks would have discarded anyway. I’d be careful to bring things up to a nice rolling boil if you’re restarting after a break.
The trick for making the lowest fat broth is to strain the finished broth and let it cool completely. In winter time, we take advantage of the great outdoors and the free chilling that comes with living in Michigan. Just don’t forget about it outside in the winter, or your broth will freeze through. Once the broth is thoroughly chilled, the fat will rise to the top and set in a nice, neat, easily removable layer. Use a spoon to skim that off and you are home-fat-free… or at least reasonably reduced. If you’ve forgotten your broth pot over night and the contents are frozen solid, the fat is the soft layer on top of the rock hard broth.
The used up bits aren’t good for much. They’ve given their all. If the broth has been boiled long enough the bones will even crumble to the touch. I suppose a risky soul might add these to a compost but I wouldn’t. No use attracting the local wildlife. Our usual process at this point is to dump the remains in a doubled plastic bag – one of those “paper or plastic” bags. If the next day doesn’t happen to be trash day, we stow the bag in the freezer, again to make them less interesting to the raccoons and woodland gnomes.
We store the broth in one quart plastic tubs. It’s best if the containers are clean and sanitized before you add the broth. We usually have a container in our fridge while the extras go in our basement chest freezer. I’ve also heard tell of making “broth cubes” with ice cube trays but we got rid of our ice cube trays when we got the new fridge (it’s got ice and cold water in the door!) plus I don’t know if there are a lot of times I’d really want *only* an cube or two of broth. It sure would be convenient if I did.
In the time it’s taken me to write this post, a glorious smell has arisen from the kitchen. It sort of fills in the gaps of the cold day and makes the place feel a bit more like home.
