A Stock Box is an amazing way to really add both flavour and nutrition to your home cooking! Not to mention a great zero-waste option that saves money too.
Did you know up to 31% of the nutrition of most vegetables in contained in the outer skin?
Let's take an onion, for example. Where is most of the quercitin - the anti-inflammatory and anti-histamine magic - concentrated? In the outer skin - the tough, dry bit most people throw away. Me? It goes in my Stock Box.
As I'm cooking, I put aside everything that is "waste". And while I'm cleaning up I carefully wash up and pick over all the skins, endy bits and tough parts - all the good-enough bits go into my Stock Box, which I keep in my freezer.
I like using the recycled flat take away boxes - partly to give them a second life and partly cos I can wiggles 3 or 4 smaller stock boxes more easily that having 1 huge one.
Potato peels, onion skins, the end bits of the bok choy...
A quick word about potato skins.
One hundred grams of skins, which is about equal to the skin from two potatoes, has double the amount of seven nutrients, five times more riboflavin, seven times the calcium and 17 times more iron than the same amount of flesh. Source
Just gently simmering the "waste" of your cooking adventures can make a MASSIVE difference to your nutrition!!
In Thailand, the cauliflowers are sold with more leaves that the actual head!! 😆 It feels WASTEFUL not to use it! And heck, the leaves you throw away have more nutrition in them than the other bit!
Cauliflower belongs to the Brassicaceae or cruciferous family, and their leaves are a good source of dietary fiber, iron, essential fatty acids, potassium, calcium, beta-carotenes, folic acid and antioxidants. source
And so yup - I'm a devotee of the stock box!!
I simply put two boxes of frozen Stock Box bits in my slow cooker, as is. I add 2 teaspoons of natural salt and some dried seaweed. Why the seaweed? We use natural, fair trade & locally harvested mineral salt from the Thai-Laos border which is not iodized, and so we're mindful to consume natural sea vegetables as often as we can. Adding a little natural dried seaweed to your vegetable stock is EASY and also gives it some extra zing. The Japanese-Korean aisle in our Thai supermarket has lots of options, as does the health food store. Great cooking habit to get into!
Cover everything with water till the Slow Cooker is filled, put it on LOW and get yourself off to bed, or off to work.
8 hours later? Voila! And your whole house will smell amazing!
Strain and use, store or freeze. I compost the cooked out veggies to give even more life back to the garden.
Warm vegetable stock is a lovely, hearty "pick-me-up" and just great sipped as is from a mug. It's serious natural medicine for sickies and convalescents too! Hangover or exhausted? LOL... this is the biz for pepping you up quickly!
I use it for soups and all sorts of cooking in savory dishes - basically use it whenever a recipe asks for water. I keep one glass jug of fresh stock in my fridge door - it easily lasts 5-7 days. And I freeze any left-over that isn't used - either in recycled containers, freezer bags or as ice cubes.
Each stock making batch yields me about 2 liters of lovely, fragrant, flavorful stock.
Look out for my next Foodies Bee Hive recipe post in the coming 2-3 days, cos today I used the fresh veggie stock as the base to make Asian Penicillin - Clear Chicken & Shitake Noodle Soup for lunch - I took pics and promise to give you the blow-by-blow how-to post!
Enjoying my kitchen adventures and sharing nutritious yumminess.
Blessed. Nourished. Grateful.
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