Notice: Function _load_textdomain_just_in_time was called incorrectly. Translation loading for the wp-ultimate-recipe domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home/maryzahc/public_html/adultfoodallergies.com/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6121
Allergy-Friendly Recipes – Page 18 – surviving the food allergy apocalypse (archive)

surviving the food allergy apocalypse (archive)

Category: Allergy-Friendly Recipes

These recipes will not contain dairy, eggs, gluten, wheat or hazelnuts. If we use a top 8 allergen, we will use a tag warning of its use.

  • Kitchen Sink Soup, vegan, gluten-free, allergy-friendly

    Allergy-friendly Kitchen Sink Soup vegan gluten-free
    Kitchen Sink Soup

    One of the ways that food allergies have taken over my brain is that I’m always planning ahead — you have to. A lack of planning can mean not eating, which in my case leads to extreme crankiness or just a complete lack of functioning. I’m also completely incapable of deciding what to eat if I’m too hungry. So I usually know what’s for dinner — tonight and tomorrow night, maybe for the whole week, but certainly for any important dates or busy nights coming up.

    On the other hand, life with food allergies also makes you pretty flexible — again, by necessity. So when I had plans to make Winter is Coming Chicken and Kale, I had chicken, polenta, and kale on hand. Or, rather, I thought I did. Turns out, hey, winter is ending and the chicken I’d defrosted (properly — in the fridge, though for two days instead of one) was not good.I don’t really know if it was bad when I bought and froze it or what, but that left me with kale and polenta, which is a really sad meal.

    So I ended up making this soup. I’m just going to call it “kitchen sink soup” because that’s pretty much what went into it — everything but the kitchen sink. It turned out so well, though, that I thought I’d go ahead and share it. I wish that it were too late to post soup recipes, but it really isn’t. We’ve moved into cool and rainy, so soup is still all over my menu. If you live somewhere where it’s not soup weather? Yeah, don’t tell me about it, please. I love soup because it’s a one-pot, one-bowl meal that can be entirely balanced.

    The key to this soup, I think, is the *right* amount of really good hot sauce for you. Even if you “don’t like spicy things,” you need the hot sauce — you will just add less. GOOD hot sauce will give you tons of flavor and it doesn’t need to have a kick. I’ve written the version for the light end — taste and add more as you see fit.

    Vegan Gluten-free Soup
    Soup pre- and post- kale awesomeness

    Kitchen Sink Soup

    • 2 teaspoons oil of your choice
    • 1/2 an onion, chopped
    • pinch of salt
    • 8 oz mushrooms, de-stemmed and broken (I prefer crimini)
    • 3 carrots, chopped
    • 3 celery stalks, sliced thin
    • 15 oz of canned or cooked garbanzo beans
    • 1 teaspoon good hot sauce (or as much as you want)
    • 4 cups of vegetable broth
    • 1 potato, peeled and chopped small
    • about 4 cups of kale, de-stemmed and shredded

    Heat soup pot over medium heat. When the pot is hot, add the oil. When the oil is hot, add the onion and the pinch of salt. Cook, stirring regularly, until onion starts to brown.

    Add the broken mushrooms. Breaking mushrooms rather than chopping them gives you bigger mushroom chunks and reduces the shrinkage. Cook until the mushrooms have sweated and darkened.

    Add the carrots, celery, garbanzo, hot sauce, and vegetable broth. Stir well, and stir in the potato. Cover and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook for 20 – 30 minutes — when the carrots and potatoes are cooked, you’re good.

    Add the kale, stir, and let cook another 2-3 minutes until the kale is brighter green. Do NOT overcook the kale! Taste and adjust the hot sauce and salt if you need to.

    Enjoy the warm veggies and dream of summer.

  • Rice Vermicelli Salad Bowls with Beef

    Steamed Rice Vermicelli Salad Bowls with Beef
    Rice Vermicelli Salad Bowls with Beef

    I love Vietnamese food. Seriously, I love it. Before the corn allergy, our local Vietnamese joint could recognize my voice before I even finished stating that I wanted to order takeout. The owner knew my name and my husband’s name, and what we generally ordered. If Shawn forgot what I wanted when stopping in to pick up dinner on his way home from work, the owner could reel off my five or so favorite dishes until Shawn heard the one that jogged his memory.  I used to get #23 with Beef, i.e. Steamed Vermicelli Patties or Banh Hoi, that you wrap up in rice paper yourself, probably more than fifty percent of the time. So it was inevitable that I figure out how to make it myself in a way that’s safe for me. However, I didn’t actually do the rice paper and make my own fresh/salad rolls, because it’s winter (yes, I know it’s technically spring, but that’s not what’s outside and it snowed yesterday), I just moved, and I’m really tired. It’s all the good stuff without the rice paper wrapper, that’s all.

    Rice Vermicelli Salad Bowls with Beef

    Serves 4 or 2 really hungry people with maybe enough for a bit of lunch the next day.

    Beef and Marinade:

    • 1 and 1/2 pounds of beef sirloin beef tips, sliced across the grain into pieces about 1 1/2 to 2 inches long and 1/4 inch wide
    • 1 garlic clove, minced and crushed to a paste (if you don’t have a garlic crusher, just mince it and smoosh it with a metal spoon)
    • 1 shallot, finely minced, or 1/4 of a small onion, finely minced
    • 1 Tablespoon of brown sugar
    • 2 Tablespoons of oil (make sure it’s safe for you, I used grape seed oil)
    • 1 Tablespoon of soy sauce (I do well with San-J Tamari Gluten Free Soy Sauce, the alcohol is from cane sugar not corn), but if you can’t use soy, try Mary Kate’s recipe for a Soy-Free, gluten-free “Tamari Sauce”
    • 1 Tablespoon of Sriracha (I use my own homemade from this recipe, but I use rice vinegar instead of distilled)
    • a bit of oil for frying

    Salad Fixings:

    • 1 – 8 ounce package of fine rice vermicelli (for reference, this is what I used, no affiliation with Amazon, just ease of linking)
    • Scallion Oil Garnish (here’s the recipe, although I used grape seed oil)
    • fresh mint or fresh thai basil or both
    • Spring Mix lettuce
    • tomatoes, sliced
    • cucumbers, sliced
    • bean sprouts (I didn’t use them, but just because the grocery store didn’t have them today)

    Condiments of your Choice:

    Slice your beef to the correct thinness and length if you haven’t already.

    Sirloin beef tips, sliced into smaller pieces, cut across the grain
    Sirloin beef tips, sliced into smaller pieces, cut across the grain

    Place garlic, shallot (or onion), brown sugar, oil, soy sauce and Sriracha in a bowl large enough to place the sirloin tips.  Mix the ingredients well so that the sugar dissolves.

    Marinade, well combined.
    Marinade, well combined.

    Add the beef and stir well.  Set the beef aside let it marinate while you work on the rest of the dish.

    Beef combined with marinade.
    Beef combined with marinade.

    Fill a large pot with 3 quarts of water and bring to a boil. Once boiling, add your rice vermicelli and let boil for 3 minutes. Drain and place in a bowl to cool.

    Rice vermicelli cooling.
    Rice vermicelli cooling.

    In a skillet (I used a cast iron wok, because it’s new and I wanted to play with it, but you can use a cast iron skillet or other skillet), heat a bit of oil over medium heat. When the oil is hot, place the beef in the skillet, making sure not to crowd, or have more than one layer.

    Beef cooking in cast iron wok
    Beef cooking in cast iron wok

    You may (will) need to do it in batches. When you have a nice sear on one side, flip the beef over and sear the other side. Tongs really help for this. Depending on your skillet and your stove, it’ll take 2-4 minutes a side to sear (this make take some experimentation on your part). You might want to put the beef on a plate as you do batches.

    Beef on a plate after being cooked in batches
    Beef on a plate after being cooked in batches

    Once you have finished cooking the beef, it’s time to assemble your salad bowl.  Place some of the vermicelli in the bowl (you may need to cut it, as the noodles are long). Add the other salad fixings of your choice, and some of the beef.  Then add the condiments of your choice and voila!

    Steamed Rice Vermicelli Salad Bowls with Beef
    Rice Vermicelli Salad Bowls with Beef

     

    Almost like the old days!

  • Chinese-Irish Baked Latkes

    Chinese-Irish Baked Latkes
    Chinese-Irish Baked Latkes

    Hey, here’s an ethnic mash-up for you. My Irish family always celebrated St. Patrick’s Day rather traditionally, in part because my grandfather’s birthday was the 16th and he loved the traditional corned beef and cabbage. Personally, though, I would survive just fine without ever seeing that again (there was an incident involving snow, Georgia, a cancelled party, and corned beef and cabbage for about 30 consumed by the six of us for, oh, about eternity. BLECH.)

    However.

    Potatoes in all their forms are one of my favorite things on earth. And I’m not actually all that Irish by blood. So I’ve been thinking of ways to mash my Chinese heritage and my Irish heritage into a dish, via midwest America, and I found it via Hanukkah’s latkes. Latkes are the best holiday food anyone has ever invented in the history of all things. Now the symbolism of latkes is focused on the oil not the potatoes, but for St. Patrick’s Day, it seems right to minimize the oil and focus on the potato, no? To hold everything together, instead of egg and flour, I’ve made a homemade sweet and sour sauce, with an added (optional) bonus of hot, and added broccoli for flavor and color (it’s green, right?).

    So I bring you the Chinese-Irish St. Patrick’s Day Latke. It’s possible that the story here makes sense to exactly one person in the world (me), but the flavors will make sense to a lot more of you. These are vegan, gluten-free, ethnically diverse, and baked, because frying is just messy. I hope you enjoy them.

    Raw latke materials
    Raw latke materials

    Chinese-Irish Baked Latkes

    • 3/4 cup water
    • 1/4 cup vinegar (cider or white, your choice)
    • 1/4 cup ketchup
    • 1/4 cup + 1 Tablespoon sugar
    • 2 Tablespoons tomato paste
    • 2 Tablespoons tapioca starch
    • 1/2 teaspoon salt
    • 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional or adjust to your taste)
    • about 1 inch of a chunk of fresh ginger, peeled and smashed (I just use the pot lid to smash)
    • 2 large baking potatoes, washed and peeled (1.5 to 2 lbs.)
    • 1 large head of broccoli, trimmed (1/2 lb.)
    • oil to grease pans

    First, make the sauce. Whisk all ingredients, water through ginger, together in a saucepan. Heat over medium-high heat until boiling, and cook, whisking regularly, to reduce to about 1/2 cup, total (a little less than half its original volume, and pretty thick). This takes 10-15 minutes. Strain out ginger and red pepper flakes (the taste of both stays in the sauce, I promise). Set aside while you prep the vegetables.

    Preheat the oven to 425ºF. Prepare two pans by spraying or brushing with oil.

    Wash the broccoli and potatoes. Peel the potatoes. Chop both into sizes that will fit in your food processor.

    Put the broccoli through the shredder blade and then empty into a large mixing bowl. Peel the potatoes and then shred them. Wrap the shreds in a clean kitchen towel and squeeze as much liquid out as you possibly can. Twist and wring — you will be surprised how much liquid is in them, and this makes your patties soggy. Squeeze a little longer than you think you should. Empty them into the bowl as well (and rinse the towel).

    Mix the broccoli and potatoes, then add the sauce. Mix. It seems as though it will not come together — but it will. I found a rubber spatula worked best for this, and I had already dirtied one scraping the sauce into the mix; so perfect.

    latkes ready for oven
    latkes ready for oven

    Scoop scant 1/4 cups of the mix onto the greased trays. Flatten these out and neaten up the edges. Don’t skip the neatening! Those bits will burn (as you can see in the photos). Bake on a center rack (not the bottom rack! Ask me how I know.) for 10 minutes, then flip all patties and bake for another 5-10 minutes (this seems to depend on the weight of the pan you are using).

    Enjoy hot.

  • Crispy Duck

    Crispy Duck
    Crispy Duck

    Crispy Duck 

    • 1 whole fresh duck (or some duck legs or breasts if you don’t want to deal with a whole duck)
    • 1 Tablespoon of sea salt
    • 2 teaspoons of Chinese Five Spice
    • a pair of good kitchen shears
    • roasting pan that can fit a rack in the bottom
    • oven safe cookie rack that fits in the roasting pan

    Preheat your oven to 350°F.

    Remove the giblets from the duck, and using your kitchen shears cut out the duck’s backbone, and then cut the breast down the center so you have two half pieces of the duck. I also trimmed the first two sections of wing off, as I didn’t want them to burn during the cooking process. (Save the giblets, backbone, and wing sections to make stock later, or discard if you don’t want to use them.) Trim any extra fat away from the duck, and remove any remaining quills. Using a sharp knife, score the skin of the duck, but do not cut so deep that you cut the meat.

    In a large shallow bowl, mix the sea salt and Chinese Five Spice so that it is mixed thoroughly. Placing each half of the duck in the bowl one at a time and use your hands to coat both sides of the duck half with the mixture.

    Place the seasoned duck halves on the rack in the roasting pan. The rack allows the duck fat to drip to the bottom, otherwise you’ll be spooning fact out as the duck cooks. (You’re also going to want to save this fat to use later, it’s a great cooking fat, especially for those of us with no safe butter, margarine, or shortening.) 

    Seasoned duck halves before cooking
    Seasoned duck halves before cooking

    Place the duck in the pre-heated oven and roast for about two hours, turning the duck halves every half hour. Once the duck reaches an internal temperature of 165°F, turn the oven up to 425°F for 15 minutes to really crisp up the skin.

    Cooked duck halves
    Cooked duck halves

    Remove the pan from the oven and let the duck cool enough that you can remove the meat from the bones without burning your fingers to bits. Then remove the meat from the bones. (Save the bones to make stock later, or discard if you don’t want to use them.) 

    Duck meat removed from the bones
    Duck meat removed from the bones

    You can eat this with Chinese pancakes, sliced cucumbers, scallions, and Hoisin sauce, like you would eat Peking Duck. Since I didn’t want to try to deal with coming up with a recipe for gluten-free Chinese pancakes, I used rice paper and ate the duck with lettuce, rice vermicelli noodles, sliced cucumber, sliced onion (I forgot to buy scallions), Carrot and Daikon pickle, homemade plum sauce, homemade Hoisin Sauce, and homemade Sriracha.

    Enjoy!

    Crispy Duck in rice paper with rice vermicelli and veggies
    Crispy Duck in rice paper with rice vermicelli and veggies

  • Making Vegan Gluten-free Thin Mints

    Vegan Gluten-free Thin Mints
    Vegan Gluten-free Thin Mints

    My friend Corinne, of sparecake, decided to move out to Wyoming for a job. So I went down to spend a day hanging out with her before she left. We’ve cooked together a few times — Corinne isn’t gluten-free, but her mom is, so we’ve tried out some recipes. For this final attempt, we did a Frankensteined faux Thin Mint, using the cookie from one cookbook and the chocolate “frosting” or glaze from another because that’s what we had all the ingredients to do.

    The cookies were not exactly like the originals, but were still crisp and chocolatey and minty, so overall, I’ll call this a success. We did reduce the amount of mint extract in the chocolate coating by a lot, as it was almost dental cleaning strong the first time around. Interestingly, there is no mint in the cookie part of a thin mint. Who knew? It’s just in the chocolate glaze.

    The dough for these cookies was super dry, and we had doubts it would hold together for rolling or cutting, but it did both admirably.

    This dough is pretty dry. But it ends up tasting good.
    This dough is pretty dry. But it ends up tasting good.
    Cut out cookies.
    Cut out cookies.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    So this dough involves cutting in the shortening, “kneading” the very dry dough until it sort of holds together, and then rolling and cutting. After the cookies are baked and cooled, add chocolate mint coating. It is a few more steps than “regular” cookies, but, hey, this is re-creation. Miss Girl Scout cookies? This is the recipe for you.

    For the full recipe, I’m going to shoot you over to Corinne’s site, sparecake. For the allergic, you will need a non-dairy milk, a safe-for-you shortening, and a meltable safe chocolate.

  • Citrus-spiced Beef Short Ribs

    Citrus-spiced Beef Short Ribs with mashed potatoes and green beans
    Citrus-spiced Beef Short Ribs with mashed potatoes and green beans

    There are two times of the year when I want to eat like the midwesterner I am — dead of winter, and height of summer. And by that, I mean there are two times of the year when I think of meat, first, and then figure out what goes with it. In the summer, I just want to grill things. But in the dead of winter, I want hearty meat and potatoes and veg meals. When I was at the grocery store browsing the meat section, I found some beef short ribs that just looked good — I’d never cooked beef ribs before, nor short ribs of any sort, but trying new things is sort of the point of this blog. So I bought them.

    I looked up some things online — a few recipes for beef short ribs in particular, as well as some technique-focused posts on braising. I followed this post for the cooking technique, more or less. And I decided to go with a sort of sweet-and-spicy, braised in the oven beef dish. It was definitely a winner, and this is a perfect mid-winter dinner — it’s hearty and warm and sort of comforting. I highly suggest serving with mashed potatoes, and I added green beans for the vegetable. I’m thinking that bok choy might taste great with the sauce, though.

    A note on the sauce — the beef gets just a hint of the spice of the red pepper flakes. The sauce itself, which still contains the actual flakes, is a good deal spicier. Adjust the measurement according to your tastes.

    Ideally, use one covered pot or pan that you can do the stove top searing and then the oven braising in — fewer dishes is good for sanity and the environment, plus all the flavor stays together. If you have a Dutch oven, this is the time to use it. As soon as I sort out enough stuff in my storage area to create space to store one, I am buying one. I used my cast iron skillet and covered it tightly with foil as it doesn’t have a lid. This worked great, although I do need to re-season after cooking with an acidic citrus juice for a few hours. It was worth it.

    Citrus-spiced Beef Short Ribs
    Citrus-spiced Beef Short Ribs

    Citrus-spiced Beef Short Ribs

    • 1.5 lbs beef short ribs, bone in, separated into individual bones
    • salt and pepper to season the ribs
    • 1/2 of a medium (baseball-sized) onion, halved and sliced thin (I prefer sweet onions)
    • large pinch of salt (probably about 1/8 teaspoon)
    • 1 Tablespoon of minced garlic
    • 1/2t – 2t crushed red pepper flakes, adjusted to taste
    • 1 teaspoon sugar (optional)
    • 1 large grapefruit, juiced, with pulp in OR 1 cup of grapefruit juice
    • 1.5 inches of ginger, peeled and sliced into rounds
    • 2 Tablespoons coconut amino acids, gluten-free tamari, or faux soy sauce
    • 1/2 cup warm water

    Preheat the oven to 325ºF.

    Heat your chosen cooking vessel over medium high heat. If you’re not using a seasoned cast iron pan, brush or spray just a light coat of oil on the pan’s surface.

    Season your short ribs with salt and pepper, both sides. When the pan is hot, add the ribs. Sear well on both sides, and I also seared the edges of the few really thick ones. More flavor is always worth the effort. Remove the seared ribs to a plate.

    Add the onions with a pinch of salt, and cook until translucent. Then add the garlic and cook, stirring, until starting to turn golden. Add the pepper flakes and stir (but also, stand back and don’t breathe the steam right away!). Scooping all of this to one side of the pan, add the ribs back and then spread the onion-garlic-pepper mix over them.

    If using, sprinkle the sugar on the ribs. Scatter the ginger slices, add the coconut aminos, and then add the grapefruit juice and water. Cover your pot or pan, and slide it into the oven. Cook for 2.5 hours.

    After removing from the oven, let the dish sit for at least 15 minutes. I then sliced through the thin membrane holding the meat to the bones so I could just serve the meat. Serve topped with the pan sauce, but leave the ginger rounds out.

    As the post from The Kitchn suggested, if you find beef ribs to be fatty, you can either trim the fat (not all that highly suggested for this cooking method) OR cook them ahead of time and scoop the fat off the cooled sauce. I didn’t find them to be too greasy or fatty this time around, and enjoyed the richer sauce over mashed potatoes. Your tastes may vary, so know that this is an option.

    Enjoy with mashed potatoes and the vegetable of your choice.

     

  • Plum Sauce

    Plum Sauce
    Plum Sauce

    I have another canning inspired recipe for you. I made and canned plum sauce because I wasn’t able to find a safe commercial version for me, and because I eat a lot of Asian and Asian inspired food. Since I’ll be using this as a condiment for some of the dishes that are coming up, I decided to post a version that you can do without canning. If you want to can this recipe, it’s found in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving on page 285 (linked to Amazon for convenience, no affiliation). I’ve cut the quantities down so that it only makes about a pint of sauce, so that you can use it before it goes bad without canning it. If I’m overestimating your potential use, you could also freeze half of it.

    Plum Sauce

    • 1/2 cup of brown sugar (make sure it’s safe for you, I corn-ed myself good by not reading labels on brown sugar once. If it says inverted sugar on it, don’t buy it if you’ve got an allergy to corn)
    • 1/4 cup of granulated sugar
    • 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar (Bragg’s is generally safest for corn allergies)
    • 3 Tablespoons of finely chopped onion
    • 1/2 Tablespoon of finely chopped jalapeno or other green chili pepper
    • 1/2 Tablespoon of mustard seeds
    • 3/4 teaspoon of salt
    • 1/2 – 1 clove of garlic (recipe converted calls for half a clove, but if you like garlic, by all means use it up)
    • 3/4 teaspoon of fresh grated ginger
    • 2 1/2 cups of pitted, finely chopped plums

    In a large stainless steel or other non-reactive (ceramic or enamel, do not use aluminum or cast iron) pot, add the brown sugar, granulated sugar, vinegar, onion, jalapeno, mustard seeds, salt, garlic, and ginger. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring constantly. Add the plums, and return the mixture to a boil. Then reduce the heat and boil gently stirring occasionally until the mixture is thick and syrupy, about 2 hours.

    Since this recipe is not being canned, at this point you could choose to use a stick blender to puree the mixture to a smooth consistency. (Note: If you are canning the recipe, follow the directions in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving and do not puree the sauce. You could be risking botulism otherwise.)

    Let the sauce cool, and once cool enough, place in a container in the fridge (or freeze some) to store. I usually put mine in a squeeze bottle so that I can use it like ketchup.

    Enjoy!

  • Crock Pot Chicken Stock, a concept

    Crock Pot Chicken Stock in jars
    Crock Pot Chicken Stock in jars

    Here’s your thought experiment for this bright Monday: you live in New England. The snow piles are so high that you, in your sensible, fuel-efficient sedan, can’t see to turn corners. Another blizzard is predicted — the third in a few weeks — to last two days. But you live in New England, and you ignore it. Without really planning it, you get snowed in for two days. You could, were you industrious, brush the car off, shovel it out, brave the roads and hit the grocery store. Or you could scavenge in your own well-but-bizarrely-stocked kitchen and not bother to get dressed. Surely there’s enough food in there for two days.

    What do you do?

    You can start with soup. What I love about stock is that it’s a way to not waste bits and pieces — you get stock! This also means, though, that there is no real recipe for stock. I mean, you can write one. We have before. But this one is more of a concept than a recipe. I read something somewhere, likely on Facebook, about making stock in your crock pot. I think I may have linked it on a Friday. I mean, brilliant, right? So if you have a snow day, are not sure what to eat once you’ve demolished the leftovers in the fridge, and own a crock pot, this recipe is for you. Even if it’s not snowing. And even though this isn’t really a recipe.

    Stock full of ingredients
    Stock ingredients

    Basic technique: Fill crock pot with stock ingredients. Fill with water. Cook for about a day.

    But here’s what I do: I collect things in the freezer. When I roast a chicken or buy a rotisserie one, I keep any skin I don’t eat and all the bones — throw them in a bag in the freezer. Add other things you aren’t using — some leftover vegetables you don’t finish, mushroom stems, the quarter of an onion you don’t need for that recipe, the herbs you bought and don’t need all of. Don’t add celery — it just turns to mush in the freezer– and I’m not a fan of brassicas in stock at all (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage) because they are very strong. Everything else? Fair game.

    This stock I took photos of started with a chicken I cooked, leaving all the skin and bones and one whole thigh (I got sick of chicken that week). I also added a bag of “leftovers” from the freezer — mushroom stems, probably three quarters of an onion, and some peas. I did thaw these for a bit, but I’ll tell you my secret cheat for that in a minute.

    To this cache from the freezer, I added everything that was still good in the fridge — a few handsful of parsley, a small bunch of thyme, a few carrots, some sad celery with the brown bits cut off, and a tablespoon or so of salt. Sometimes, I add peppercorns. Sometimes, I’ll roast some of the veg first; this adds great flavor, but it’s not necessary for good stock. If you have no fresh herbs, add some dried. I usually add a bay leaf, but I was out this time around. Thyme, basil, oregano, dill — all are good in stock. Add what sounds good. You can also add a bit of tomato paste, but this time, I had just finished a jar of pasta sauce for lunch, so I rinsed it out and added that water to the stock, too.

    Pack all this in your crock. Then fill the crock with water. Put on the lid and cook. It really is that easy. Cook 4-6 hours on high (recommended if you started with anything frozen), or 8-12 on low. I’ve never overcooked stock, so I think this is a pretty forgiving recipe.

    IF you have started with some frozen or partially frozen parts, here’s how to cheat — generally, crock pots don’t do well with frozen foods. They just don’t get hot enough. I thaw things for a few hours or overnight in the fridge first, but then I add a few cups of boiling water. Not starting from cold seems to help. You can also run the pot on high for the first hour and then turn it down.

    When your stock is done, you want to strain out all the “stuff” you just extracted flavor from — I use a giant kitchen bowl with a colander in it. Dump the entire pot in, and then lift out the colander full of bones and vegetables.

    If you plan to use plastic to store your stock, let it cool to room temp first. If you’re using jars, it works fine to pour it in hot. Stock should keep about 5 days in the fridge, and a few months in the freezer. Or, hey, get fancy and make some risotto right away with the hot stock.

    Let us know if there are any particular ingredients you love in stock!