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Soup! A foundation of winter food in our house for sure.

I’m a huge proponent of making one’s own soup stock. It costs pretty much nothing and if you start with your own yummy stock it’s very hard to make a soup that’s not also yummy (as well as being free of excess salt and preservatives and who knows what else). It’s also really easy, since it’s more a general technique than a recipe and it doesn’t need any special equipment. It does take a number of hours but the active time is very minimal.

First, save up some chicken (…duck, turkey) bones. Chuck them in a ziploc and toss them in the freezer. A friend once added the brilliant notion of also tossing parmesan rinds in there — definitely do that if you have any.

Once you have some bones and a longish afternoon, it’s time to make stock.

Put all the bones in a big pot and cover them with water.

While the pot comes to a boil, poke through your veggie bin and pull out any or all of these according to your taste and whatever’s in the bin: carrots, celery, celeriac, onions, shallots, garlic, mushrooms. How much? Not a lot. Some. Doesn’t matter much. A carrot or two, an onion or two, a few cloves of garlic. Whatever strikes your fancy. They don’t have to be lively fresh veggies — elderly limp-ish ones will do.

Wash them, cut them up roughly (no need to peel) and toss them in the pot too.

Add some seasonings. I usually put maybe a dozen peppercorns, some savory (a teaspoonish pinch in my very large pot), some thyme (another teaspoonish pinch) and a small pinch of rosemary. Sage is nice too. But again, whatever strikes your fancy and/or whatever’s handy in the cupboard.

Once the pot boils, put the lid on and turn it waaaaay down. You want to keep it boiling gently but not at the point where it might boil over or otherwise cause you to pay attention to it. You want a nice quiet simmer so you can stir it once an hour or so and go about your business the rest of the time.

So yeah, stir it once an hour or so. At this point your house will smell strongly of yum and your stomach will rumble so make a sandwich or something.

At some point you have to declare it done. In our house this happens in one of two ways: either I notice the chicken vertebrae have totally disarticulated and I’m sure no further goodness will boil out of the bones, or I get really bored and declare it done just because.

Now comes the only boring part: getting all the icky bones and drowned veggies out of the actual soup. I usually get a strainer and a second large pot and pour or ladle the soup and bones through the strainer and into the second pot.

When the strainer fills up, dump it in the green bin & repeat. Take the garbage out right away because it’ll stink really quickly, but make sure it’s safe from raccoons because they LOVE this stuff. Don’t even think about eating the veggies; they’ve given their all at this point.

Now you’ve got a pot full of soup stock, hurray! Except it’ll have a layer of fat on top.

You can either cool it off a bit put it away right away, in which case the fat will rise to the top in whatever containers you’re using, or you can leave it overnight in the fridge and skim the fat off before putting it into containers.

Either way it’ll keep for a short while in the fridge and approximately forever in the freezer.

Then whenever you get sick all you need to do is pull out a container of stock, some salt (I never salt my stock so whatever soup I’m making will need salt) and some noodles and there you are, chicken noodle soup. Or for a quick dinner: container of stock, finely chopped random fridge vegetables and/or meat, bit of cream, cook it, done.

Oh! I should mention that homemade stock will gel when cooled. It may also still have a little fat in it or seasonings that settle to the bottom. This grosses some people out (my husband for one) but it’s totally normal. Actually the gelling is very convenient because nice thick soup is less likely to leak out of its container if you take some to work to heat up for lunch.

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