Ode to broth

I told you I wanted to talk about soup

So, here’s what you do: every time you cut up some veggies for use in your everyday cooking, don’t throw the scraps in the green bin (or compost if you’re a *farmer*), just put them in a freezer bag and tuck it away in the back of the freezer until you’ve accumulated enough to make some broth. Also save that rotisserie chicken carcass and the bones from every bone-in meat you’ve cooked and eaten. They go in the freezer, too. Take it all and throw it in the biggest pot you have, cover it with water, bring it to a light boil and then let it simmer until the ancestors tell you its done (several hours at least). Strain it. Put some in the fridge and some in the freezer. Make soup.

Broth is a base. A vehicle for soup. Make any broth and you can kinda make any soup (the soup purists will have my head). Sure, some soups might specifically ask for a beef broth or a chicken broth or a dashi and yes, they definitely offer different levels of complexity and flavor profiles, but when you have 5 quart jars of homemade broth in your fridge it doesn’t matter what kind it is, you’re going to use it for anything you can. For example, for the last three days I’ve made an egg drop soup for breakfast. I took my broth, made and mixed in a miso slurry and stirred in my eggs, topped it with green onions and garlic chili crisp and while it wasn’t *authentic* it was very tasty.

I love recipes. I’ll follow a recipe like a loyal dog. I have hondashi in my fridge for when I want a *true* miso soup (I also have dried kombu and bonito flakes if I’m feeling really fancy), I have half a shelf in my pantry dedicated to different store-bought broths (truly, I use them in everything— a flavorful water replacement imo). But there is something about the process of making a homemade broth that really brings out something primal in me.

When my dad died one of the first things I did was make this garlic broth. It was before I was saving my veggie scraps and before I really knew the glory of just fucking winging it in the kitchen, but I did know that I needed a large pot of something nourishing simmering on the stove, filling my house with savory steam. I did it again when my dog got sick last summer. It was not the weather for it, but I bought a rotisserie chicken both because it was easy sustenance during a time when I was literally breaking open and could not be bothered to feed myself and because I knew that if I just could get to the carcass I could throw it in a pot with some frozen veg scraps and make broth and making broth was a singular thing I felt capable of doing. Such little work, such a high reward.

There are other ways to make a good broth, of course. It does not only have to come from the depths of despair. It also doesn’t have to be veggie based. My inspirational friend Chelsea (like in every way: writing, cooking, life) gifted me The Chicken Soup Manifesto by Jenn Louis and I’ve been slowly working my way through the recipes since last winter. Her chicken stock is easy: 5lbs chicken bones + 4 quarts of water, brought to a rapid simmer and then reduced to a low simmer for 6-8 hours. The absolute perfect rainy day activity and why you should aways save your chicken bones in the freezer like a witch.

Now, I hang out with a lot of country hippies and I know that nothing can make you feel less capable than a friend who knows how to make everything from scratch and likes to say ‘it’s so easy!’ Some things (sourdough (generally), successful gardening, spinning wool, building/refurbishing furniture) are not easy. Sure, they can become easy with time and patience, but sometimes we’re short on both of those things. Sometimes all we got is enough time to throw things in a pot and let them do their thing while we carry on with our lives. I promise, making your own broth will make you feel like a capable homesteader, even if you’re in the middle of a city. And maybe this feels like common knowledge. Maybe you’re reading this like, E, come on, everyone knows how to make broth. But I assure you, they do not (this was made clear to me when I told a middle aged woman I work with that I made veggie broth and she proceeded to ask many detailed questions about the process). There is someone out there right now who does not know how absolutely easy it is and maybe by some wild happenstance they will stumble upon this newsletter and think, hm, maybe I can do that, too. And I want them to know that yes, yes they can.

So go forth my friends! Save your veggie scraps and chicken bones! Make broth! Eat soup! Stay warm!

More soon,

E

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As an aside, I did look up the different between broth and stock while writing this. From Food and Wine:

Stock is generally made from bones, and broth is generally made from flesh. In both cases, they are often supported with aromatic vegetables, but in the case of stock, left unseasoned for maximum flexibility in recipes, whereas broth will usually contain at least salt and pepper. For stock, bones are usually roasted before use for color and flavor, for broth, the meats tend to be used directly from raw. This is why many stocks are darker than broths from the same proteins.

So I wanna just state for the record that I just like the word broth better, though I’ve used them somewhat interchangeably in this piece and in life. And, like, bone broth often requires roasting the bones before making the broth (why this is not one of my go to broths), but that is a stock thing? I don’t know. I have this one cookbook that is like ***ONLY USE STOCK NEVER BROTH WE ARE PURISTS*** and that stresses me out to the point of not cooking any recipe of theirs that requires stock. Or broth. Or whatever. So, this is just to say that I don’t need to hear it from anybody who has strong opinions about word choice or the differences between broth and stock. You can keep those to yourself. Please and thank you.