Portions

Making Homemade Broth

The key to a good soup starts with a tasty stock. Fortunately, making a delicious broth is much easier than you may think.  After that the possibilities are endless.  Soup can be as economical or as decedent as you want. Learn how to prepare the basics for making your own beef, chicken and vegetarian broths just as we do here in our store. 

The Basics:  Once you know these guidelines, the rest is easy!

• Always make a stock with cold, filtered water.
• Choose a pot that  has enough depth for you to cover your ingredients and allows for an aditional 3 to 4 inches of "simmering" space
• Once the "broth water" has been brought to a boil, remove the lid, reduce the heat and simmer for about 3 hours.
• To make a more concentrated broth, simmer, uncovered for 5 or more hours.
• Do not add salt when making broth.  Always season to taste once your soup has been made.
• Do allow the fat from the bones to simmer in your soup.  It will add flavour as it cooks and be skimmed off later.
• Skimming your broth as it cooks is not necessary.  It will be strained later.
• Once the simmering process is complete and the broth has cooled slightly, strain everything through a fine sieve or a cheesecloth lined colander and refrigerate overnight.
• Lift solidified fat from the chilled broth surface and discard.  This will produce an almost fat free pure soup stock or a broth base for so many other uses.
• Chicken broth does not require any roasting or sautéing of the ingredients but it is fine to use bones that have already been cooked.
• Beef broth does require the bones and the vegetables to be roasted before it is made.
• Vegetable broth does require the vegetables to be sautéed or roasted before it is made.  

Stock Shortcut

If you don't have 3 to 5 hours to make stock from scratch, we've made it easy for you.  At Portions we have prepared pure, de-fatted stocks for your convenience in our freezer.

Links to 3 excellent broth recipes:

Beef Broth  *   Chicken Broth   *  Vegetable Broth