Soup Stock from Veggie Scraps

This was a recent rainy day project. I got the idea from one of the SKIP badges on Permies.com. It interested me because I’ve never thought to do something like this before. Usually, my kitchen scraps are fed to the goats or are put in the chickens’ compost bin. To make soup stock, I took a 2-gallon freezer bag and tossed in stalks, ends, and peelings of various vegetables. I kept it in the freezer until the bag was full, then I made a nice vegetable soup stock.

No recipe is actually required. Just cover the scraps with water, simmer them down, then strain and season as desired.

I pressure canned it according to the directions for vegetable stock in the Ball Blue Book: 30 minutes for pints and 35 minutes for quarts at the appropriate pounds of pressure for your altitude. Salt is optional. I know many folks prefer to add the salt when they open the jar. I add it when I can it. Why? Because the past year and a half have caused me to rethink much of what I do and ask if there is a more logical way to do it. It just seems prudent to add the salt now, while I have an abundance of salt. Hopefully, salt will remain cheap and plentiful as things change, but nowadays, who knows?

My yield was six quarts and nine pints. The pints are the perfect amount for making rice or gravy, or adding to my defrosted soup fixins’. The quarts are handy for larger quantities of soup.

I don’t know if I’ll continue to make veggie stock, mostly because there isn’t much room in my freezer to store the scraps. But it’s a nice addition to the pantry and handy to know how to do.