The recent compost thread here made me want to post about what I do at the beginning of every winter. First off, I have a lot of refrigerated storage. Two refrigerator/freezers, and a large commercial chest freezer at my house. What I do throughout the year is save all of my vegetable scrapsi tubs in the freezer - the stuff that starts going bad, ends of onions, ends of anything really that get trimmed off. I also save meat scraps. Fish heads, shrimp shells/heads, chicken bones/carcasses, beef trimmings, etc. About this time every year, I use all of those scraps to make stock for soups.
Then, I go to the local restaurant supply store for ingredients to make the soups. For example, I got a 40lb bag of onions for $6. Beans, barley, split peas, canned anything is sold in bulk at better prices than costco/sams club. I go to a place called Restaurant Depot, so if you have a business license, check that place out. I also use them for supplying things for my business, but that's another story.
I get 16 and 32 oz styrofoam containers to hold soup in my chest freezer. So, for about $120 spent on supplies, I will get about 20-30 gallons of different soups for the winter. This is what I made over the weekend:
Clam Chowder
Potato Leek
Creamy Tomato Basil
African Sweet Potato
Cream of Broccoli Cheddar
Cream of Baked Potato
Curried Carrot
Barley Mushroom
Split Pea
Navy Bean and Vegetable
Cioppino Base
With the amount of stock that I make, I probably save about $50, and I also know what's going in it. Just thought I'd shoot this out there to give some people some ideas.
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