December 13th 2024
I am asked the question ‘what’s for dinner’ by a variety of people each week…my children, my husband, my Mum, my best friend, myself!
So here is an idea for the week.
‘All Week Long’ Chicken Stock
Not strictly a meal but incredibly nutritious and useful!
Take the bones from some cooked chicken legs or a whole chicken caracas and immediately pop the bones into a slow cooker. It you don’t have a slow cooker, you won’t be able to keep this safely cooking continually all week, but you could cook it for a shorter time in a pot on your hob or in your oven. You will still get excellent, nutritious results.
Next add water, around three quarters of the way up your slow cooker, or other cooking pot and then add some onion skins (a superfood), carrot, celery leaves (dramatically change the taste), salt, herbs and leave to cook on low all week.
Keep adding water if there is a lot of evaporation and feel free to add any more raw vegetable scraps, onions skins, herbs, or a splash or two of apple cidar vinegar throughout the week. Be creative.
If you are doing the slow cooker version; let it cook on low, day and night throughout the week. If you are cooking it on the hob, do the same but cook all through the day, or for as long as you can, whilst you are at home, keeping an eye on your stock and adding more water as needed.
Once you are happy with the taste and richness of your stock, you can be continually drawing off the deeply nutritious superfood to make soups, add into stews, bolognaise, chilli or gravy. Just ladle it in, minding any bones!
By the end of the week you can strain and freeze your powerful super rich stock or keep some in the fridge to use when you want. You could even warm some of it up as a drink at lunchtime?!
Making stock seems so intimidating, but lets bring it back to the very basics. You are boiling bones in water to release the collegan, vitamins and minerals and then adding this or that to increase the nutrition and taste! I used to get so frustated with complicated stock recipies that i resolved to simply pour water over the bones and cook them! In time however, I’ve gradually built up an understanding of the different elements i want to include in my stock and what they bring to the stock.
Take onion skins, for example. Who forgot to tell us that onion skins are a superfood?! Onion skins contain fiber, vitamins A, C, and E, potassium, manganese, and copper! They also contain a range of phytonutrients including flavonoids, phenolic acids, and sulfur compounds, which have been shown to have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. How amazing is God to have created all these nutritious foods for us! May He continue to open our eyes to all He has given us.