Fighting Food Waste: Vegetable stock

It's one of those things that I have always meant to do but never really got around to it: making my own stock.

I got the idea for this stock after chopping a truckload of vegetables to go into a beef stew. I had so many scraps it really seemed a shame to bin them all.

So I googled a bit and came up with the idea to make a stock out of them! You can virtually put anything in this that's a vegetable - I had the ends of carrots and onions, celery stalks and various peelings.

Essentially, I just put all the vegetable scraps into some water and brought it up to the boil. I didn't add any salt because I prefer to add it when I'm cooking a meal.

I skimmed the scum that rises to the top after a few minutes and then left it to simmer for about an hour or two.

Then I strained the whole lot with a fine sieve twice, to make sure I got out all the solids. THEN I binned the leftover veges!

The remaining stock was a lovely dark colour. I froze it flat in a sandwich zip-lock bag for use in a future cooking endeavor! It made about two cups.

Do you ever make your own stock? What kind and how often?