A Note On Orts

OR

Wasting Not When You're Already Wasting Not

Don't you just hate when people give you conflicting messages? I know I do. "We really want you to get an education!" say the universities, "But we're going to charge you thousands of dollars to do so!" or, "As a charity, we want to provide the funds to help these unfortunate people live/heal," say the TV ads, "But we're going to keep 89% of the money we get for advertising!" Mixed messages are frustrating because they're oxymoronic; you tell me to do one thing, but then tell me something that is the complete opposite, yet you say both are true? What do you mean?

Unfortunately, I'm a bit of a hypocrite and a wee bit forgetful. Today, whilst making soup, I realized I'd forgot to mention something regarding the construction of stock, and wanted to reiterate so we were all on the same page. I'm about to deliver a few mixed messages of my own. (But I promise I'll try to make them clear.) Sorry.

Orts are an old 15th century English word for "morsels from a meal" or "scraps", the same things I've been telling you to scrounge whenever you can from other people's houses and your own finished meals. They are the bones, decorate pieces (lettuce leaves, parsley), vegetable tray and sandwich platter leftovers. They are the bits that nobody else knows what to do with, and plans to throw out. But we say "nay!" (I'm getting a little too into this old English crap, I think) and take them back to our own kitchens to construct new foods out of.

In my How To Make Stock post - which was not called that at all - I noted that my mother never cooks the meat (in animal-based soups) with the bones and cartilage while making broth. This is a tried-and-true method of keeping your meaty bits tasty. When you boil something, you suck all the nutrients and taste out of it and force them into the water like a bad swimming teacher. So if you boil the crap out of bones that still have the meat on them, strain the lot of it, then pick the meat off the bones and throw it back into the soup, the meat is going to be pretty tasteless. Therefore, if you're making a meat-based soup, always pick the good parts off before you cook the bones.

Now's where I contradict myself.

Exhibit A: Separated broth and chicken
 bones/sweet potato peelings

The other day I was at my parents and we had a roast chicken for dinner. Mom had already taken the majority of meat off the bird bones, and had no desire to make broth. "I can always go buy another bird," she said. Not all of us are that lucky. So I asked if I could have the orts of the meal - the chicken scraps. They sat in my freezer for a few days, then I cooked them up (along with some veggie scraps) and made myself a stock. Once I'd strained my finished stock, I realized the bones still had a fair bit of meat on them. Therefore I contradicted what I'd said a few posts ago, picked the meat off, and threw it back in the pot.

There is a reason for my madness. The meat may be mostly tasteless at this point, but it is still edible. I decided against using the potato peels (even though they're fine to eat once they've been cooked), but I saved the meat because it's crazy expensive, I wanted something to help fill up the pot, and it becomes one of the two main filling-bits in the soup as the main source of protein. (New potatoes were the main source of carbohydrates, if anyone was wondering.)

The short version:

Exhibit B: Chicken meat separated from the bones.

1) Keep the majority of your meat out of broth preparation, but if there's meat left on the bones you've boiled, pick it off and put it back in the pot.

2) Always take free leftover meat bits (if you include them in your diet). They are expensive, they contain useful nutrients, and these foods are too resource-intensive to be wasting. It takes much more food, oil, and energy to produce meat than it does for grains or plants. Chucking useful bits of meat into the trash is a middle-finger salute to the Earth and the poor animal that was dinner. (This being said, animal products, especially those raised the conventional way, can contain antibiotics, hormones, adrenaline, bacteria, and are harder than plants for your body to digest, which is why I stick to broths. They also leave an acidic residue in your alkaline intestinal tract. Go easy on the animal products for their health and yours.)

Controversially,
- Leah

Special GF Recipe: Carrot and Sweet Potato Soup

OR

The Three-Ingredient Autumn Dinner

(Being as GF now knows I've been writing about her - and she likes the alternate name, because it reminds her of Final Fantasy VIII - she's agreed to write recipes for my blog! This is good news for both you and I, because I can't cook well/don't measure with recipes and she's a cutie. This is one of my favourite soups she makes. It's super simple and is both light and filling. I've put it in a bottle and had it as a drink before for travel convenience. Adding the ginger in makes it to die for.)

(Sorry, I didn't have a photo of the soup from when it was last made.
This is it frozen.)

Hi everybody! GF here with on of my many delicious recipes! Today it's going to be a... drum-roll, please! Sweet Potato and Carrot Soup! Or SPACS! That sounded and looked better in my head. Don't care! Rolling with it!

So, to create your SPACS you'll need the following items:

- A big pot (or a small one. Depends how much soup you want.)

- 2 large bowls

- Large carrots (5-20, again depending how much soup you want.)

- 1-3 Large sweet potatoes (more soup = more potatoes)

- A small chunk of ginger root (optional - it's great for flus and colds and icky feels)

- Wooden spoon/plastic ladle

- Peeler and a knife

- 1L or 1-2 cans of stock (I usually use beef)

Now that you've assembled your stuff, we begin!

Step One: Peel your carrots and potatoes! If you're using it, peel a tiny chunk of ginger, too.

Step Two: Cut your vegetables into chunks! Small chunks are best. 

Step Three: Toss your vegetables (ginger too) into your pot and add water! You want the veggies to be totally covered with about a third more.

Step Four: Boil them babies! (Don't cover the pot!)

Step Five: When your carrots and potatoes are super soft (super duper soft) remove the pot from the heat. Carefully scoop the veggies into a large bowl. If you used ginger, that can go in your compost bin now. Pour the (now orange) water you boiled your stuff in into another large bowl. (Got that? One bowl has boiled veggies, the other has orange broth.)

Step Six: Pureé/mash your vegetables! It's easier to do in smaller amounts and with the leftover liquid. Scoop some of the orange broth into whatever you're using to mash or blend you veggies (blender, bowl) and then toss the smushed up stuff back into your pot!

Step Seven: Once your veggies have been turned to glop and are in your pot you can, should you wish, add some more of your broth - but not too much, because you're going to pour in the entire carton/cans of your liquid stock! All of it!

Step Eight: Gently heat and stir your soup for about 20 minutes, then serve! 

Bonus: your leftover carrot broth can now be stored and used as a soup base or cooking broth! Try using it to cook your Rice and Lentils instead of just plain water. Yum!

(P.S:

1) There are such things as rainbow carrots. That was terrible English. Feel free to use purple, yellow, or white carrots (not parsnips, although I'm sure they'd be yummy) in place of orange ones for this recipe! Your soup might have more of a brown colour, bit it'll still taste the same - and it'll have the added benefits of different phytonutrients!

2) You don't have to have a big, powerful Vita-mix to make cream soups - we use a little Magic Bullet. A potato masher also works, although it'll be chunkier.)

Enjoy!

- GF (and Leah)

Please, Sir, May I Have Some More?

OR

How Putting Bones In The Freezer Helps Keep You Fed

I'm one of those people who knows the words to 90% of the songs that come on the radio.

Ask me who the song's performed by or what it's called and I'll stare at you like a deer in the headlights, but I can generally memorize at least the tune of a song the first time I hear it and know a good chunk of the lyrics by the third. I have no idea how I learn them, I just do. 

Like how double-jointed people don't know how they freakishly dis-form their limbs. Ugh.

In my tiny apartment freezer I have a bag of green bin-worthy vegetable scraps, and, until recently, a bag of leftover chicken bones and skin. They get tucked away on the freezer door or in the back by the compost*, ignored until I find potatoes that are going soft (always cut them open before you toss them! If they're still white they're still good!) or score free veggie tray leftovers from a party. Then I pull one out and make myself some soup.

Making stock from scratch is one of those things an alarming number of people don't know how or are too hesitant to try to do. It's not hard, but the convenient cartons or cans of broth at the grocery store are just so much easier, and make the task of making from scratch seem, especially to a busy student, worker, or parent, really daunting and unnecessary.

Not to knock the canned stuff - we do keep a couple cartons on hand when we need something quick, and for flavors we don't really have bones around for, like beef - but while homemade may not be necessary, it is worth it. Not only is homemade stock 100% less salty (figures are just pulled out of my arse) but it has no preservatives, hasn't been pasteurized, and often has more, or an actual amount of - in the case of meat-based stocks - gelatin, which is super good for those of us with achy joints. Plus it tastes better, and is made of things you already have lying around, instead of costing you an extra $2.29.

It's like Mr. Christie VS Grandma. Christie's stuff is pretty good, but there's nothing like a homemade chocolate chip cookie, Grandma-style. Not that my grandmothers really baked chocolate chip cookies, but they did make homemade bread, and that stuff is beautiful.

Making stock is stupidly easy, too. I was going to say that GF taught me how to do it, but actually, I think it was my mother. Mom's a very "throw stuff together and hope it works" sort of cook, but she's good at it. "Mix and match" suppers and "The Great Fry-up" are specialties of hers. She also makes a damn good turkey soup. She once showed me how to make that soup, but never told me how to make the broth. I must have gleaned the technique from watching her every Christmas day.

It's like the music thing. I don't know how I know it. I just do.

Start by saving the crap everyone else tells you to throw out (unless it's fuzzy or blue or smells bad). Those almost-slimy lettuce pieces from a salad. Onion skins that aren't quite brown. Celery leaves or asparagus bottoms or the tiny roots on beet greens. If you roast a chicken or have another sort of meat product with bones, keep everything you don't eat, including the cartilage or leftover meat. You can mix the veggies and meat or keep them separate. I generally keep mine apart (in case of vegetarian guests), but I recently made a ham and pea soup with a bunch of veggies and half an apple-roasted ham as the base (plus ham I'd scavenged from the dinner table of a family get-together).

Before

Once you've got a medium-sized Ziploc bag full, dump the contents into a big pot (no need to defrost) and fill it with water. You can put as much water in as you'd like, but the more you have the more diluted your stock will be. A 2-to-1 ratio is usually good. Feel free to add bay leaves or any other spice you'd like. Turn on the stove to about medium heat and let the suckers boil!

After

(Maniacal laughter)

Depending on what you're boiling, this step could take one to five hours. Bigger animals = more time (a good analogy for digestion, by the way). Give beef bones four to five hours, pork three to four, poultry one to two, and vegetables one to two, depending on how potent you want your stock. Once your water's turned a rich colour (anywhere from gold to brown to red, if you used beets), strain your stock through a colander - or just tilt the pot while holding the lid at an angle - into another pot. TA DAA. The pretty leftover liquid is stock! You can use it right away or freeze it or... drink it, I guess.

On an ending note, for all you folks who fit the "I'm too busy" category, remember:

1) Homemade stock is free, especially if all your scraps are scavenged instead of bought.

2) Homemade stock isn't loaded with salt (unless you dump it in there) and contains lots of vitamins and minerals that the process of preserving canned stock kills off.

3) You don't have to make stock right away (although you can; Mom always started making turkey stock as soon as the bird had cooled and been picked over). Even freezer-burnt meats and vegetables make tasty stock, so you don't have to stuff soup prep into an already busy day. Wait for a lazy Sunday.

4) An excellent tip from Mom: If you're making an animal-based soup, don't put the meat in with the stock bones. Add the meat last (because it's pre-cooked anyway) during your soup construction to keep it flavorful! 

Sweet Simmering!
-Leah 

*We keep it there to avoid smells and fruit flies. The apartment is so warm in the summer that vegetables, fruit, and bread will go bad within a couple days if we keep them out of the fridge. There's such thing as silicone buckets specially made for folks with our problem, but a reused plastic bag is way cheaper than a $50 tub, thank you very much.