It was raining last weekend, and there is no better time than in the rain to make some stock. I had a bunch of chicken stock from a session a couple weeks ago, so I went ahead and made a veggie stock and a pork stock. Why veggie and pork? Well, veggie is great to have around if you need a very mild stock for a soup where chicken stock would overpower the flavours, and pork is great for braised pork dishes and for dishes where you want a little more umpf than chicken stock. This is not stricktly a Farm Box ingredients post as the quantities needed were more than I had left over from my Farm Box (I picked them up on a Rainbow run), but if you find yourself saving some of these items up over the course of a few weeks then go for it!

For both the stocks I lightly roasted up carrots …

… leeks …

… onions, celery, and a little garlic.

Almost all of it went into the veggie stock. I just put the veggies in a pot, covered with water, and brought it up to a boil and immediately turned it down to a simmer for an hour. For the last 10 minutes I added in a little parsley, a couple sprigs of thyme, and one small sprig of oregano. I was trying hard to control the flavours so that’s why I only did a 1 hour simmering, and why I only put in the herbs for ten minutes.

For the pork stock, I started by roasting up 15 pounds of pork bones (two trays worth of what you see in the picture), then hucked it all in a big pot, covered with water, brought to a boil, turned down to a simmer, and then let it go for FOUR hours. Meat stock requires more time than veggie stock as the intent is also to draw out the collagen from the product. This time the lightly roasted veggies I saved from going into the veggie stock went in to the stock pot for only the last hour.

Both the stocks got cooled in an ice bath, and then it went in to the fridge for the night. This way it is easy to remove the fat from the pork stock – it floats to the top and gets solid and can easily be scooped off the thick stock below. then it was just a matter of putting it all into labeled “deli” containers.

In the end here’s what I ended up with …

That’s the veggie stock on the left – seems like I made 6 1/2 pints. There was more pork stock – looks like 12 1/2 pints.

Is making your own stock worth it? Well, it was about 30 bucks in ingredients, and about 3 hours of active time (full process was over a day). Is that worth it for 19 or so pints of homemade stock? As a comparison, before the chicken stock session a couple weeks ago, we had to buy 2 pints of chicken stock from Bi-Rite. Now, Bi-Rite has high quality product, but I gotta tell you it still paled in comparison to homemade. And those two pints were $6.99. So assuming equal quality, the stock I made was maybe 60 Bi-Rite dollars, and I paid 30 bucks plus labour – if I paid myself 10 bucks an hour then I’d come out even!