Stocking Up

So you're feeling all thrifty and culinarily advanced, making homemade stock in your kitchen. Maybe you're even kickin' it super-frugal old-school like your gramma and saving your veggie bits in a stock bag. Homemade stock is really easy, tastes incredible (especially compared to the high-sodium stuff from the store), makes your house smell great, and saves money. But you still need to be able to store it.

Stock "brick" sits easily, is compact, and easy to defrost in a bowl.

Like most people, I freeze my stock. I used to take the "flat bag" approach, but in my freezer approximately 10% of bags get mysteriously punctured. The only way to know which is to defrost and see if they leak! It took about a dozen episodes of losing half a bag of my lovely stock in the sink or microwave or fridge to decide to always use a container "just in case." Well, there's no easy way to put a flat bag in a bowl to catch any leakage! Now, if you have the perfectly organized freezer where you never toss items around and you also know you never, ever overfill your bags, then flat bags may work for you. Ditto for glassware. I prefer "stock bricks" myself.

Shown here just out of the freezer.

Filling 8-10 bags and fitting them into a 9X13 pan is easier (in my experience) than trying to freeze them flat. I can fit 8 bags with 3 cups each into a 9X13 and the other 2-4 in a saver of some sort. I do my best to make sure fluid is distributed evenly so they don't stick together (see photo above). I pull them out of the freezer after a day or so, separate them and store them back in the freezer. If any are stubborn, I let them sit on the counter for 5 minutes or so.  You could run them under cool running water for a minute to separate, then stick them back in the freezer.

I used to freeze in smaller quantities, but I use more stock nowadays because it's a really wonderful way to add flavor. When I defrost, any extra goes into a mason jar in the fridge for use that week.

I am still using the plastic baggies. I would love a re-usable (or at least recyclable) alternative for freezing stock, so if you have a better option, please let me know. For now though, even with the baggies, my taste buds, my health, my budget and my planet come out ahead with homemade stock. Try some today!