Slow simmer for 2+ hours.

• Meat and bones

• Onions, 1 or 2

• Carrots, 4

• Celery, 4

• Garlic, 5 big cloves

• Black pepper corns, < 1 tsp.

• Red pepper flakes, < 1 tsp.

• Fennel seeds, < 1 tsp.

• Vinegar, 1 or 2 tsp.

Herbs can be added at the end of the simmer or when you take the pot off the heat to let it cool.

• Parsley

• Rosemary

• Thyme

• Bay leaf, 2 leaves

Allow it to cool enough so that you can strain it without burning yourself. Remove large pieces with tongs or a spoon before straining. Use an extra-fine mesh strainer or a cheese cloth. Gently press with the back of a spoon or ladle into the strainer to squeeze out the last drips.

Allow it to cool for 1-2 hours before putting it in the fridge. If it goes in hot it will warm up everything in your fridge and may cause spoilage.

Season with salt only as you need it.

Other tips:

• For a darker color and richer flavor, roast bones on a pan in the oven before they go in the pot. 375F/190C. 15 minutes for chicken. 30 minutes for beef. Deglaze the pan by adding a splash of water and gently scraping the bits off the pan into the pot.

  1

• For a clearer broth you can blanch the bones before roasting them. Cover the bones with cold water and bring to a boil for 15 minutes. Discard the water.

• For chicken stock I’ll get one whole chicken and break it down. The parts I want to cook later go in the fridge and the rest goes in the pot.

• For cows and pigs, marrow and knuckle bones are good.

• Stock is about re-using stuff that was going to not get used and it’s a base for making other dishes, so precision isn’t important. For all the vegetables in the stock, however they are cut or smashed to fit in the pot is fine. They get strained and discarded at the end unless you take care to cut everything in a way that you’ll be able to keep them in like a soup.

• I prefer white onions, but red onions, yellow/sweet onions, green onions, and shallots are good too. Shallots and green onions are nice with pork.

• The leafy tops of carrots and celery are good to include. Celery also has leafy parts in the center of a bundle that are good to add since they normally don’t get eaten.

• Black pepper corns, fennel seeds, and red pepper flakes are often in the bulk spices section. I’m putting in less than a teaspoon of each, eye-balling it in my palm. It’s about 10-20 individual corns/flakes/seeds.

• I prefer apple cider vinegar or white vinegar. Sherry vinegar is nice with pork.

• I don’t typically use rosemary and thyme together. I use rosemary with birds and thyme with mammals.