From wiki answers here's the long and short of it:
"While they're both the liquid results of boiling animal parts, stock tends to be made with bones and inedible bits, while broth is made by boiling meat. Both can contain vegetation as well, with whole vegetables like celery and onions more common in stock, and simple herbs more common in broth. Stock is often richer in mouth feel because longer cooking time renders more of the connective tissue into gelatin. It should also set up like a tasty meat jell-o in the fridge for the same reason. "
So what I have always done is get a whole chicken, placed vegetables in the pot with it and boiled it to make a broth by definition. I would then stain off the broth, clean the meat off the chicken and us it for soup or enchiladas or something and discard the vegetables. Sometimes I would do this in the crock pot. While it's healthy and good, it's not really ubber flavorful.
So here's my new revolutionary method. I noticed that at the Mexican markets you could get chicken bones with almost all the meat cleaned off, they are super cheap. We're talking less than a dollar. So I put the bones, about a dollars worth of vegetable(onion,celery, carrots), maybe two dollars and water in my dutch oven. I just recently got a dutch oven and I am not sure how I lived without it before. Lot's of dutch oven love going on in this house. Anyway, I also throw in peppercorns and salt and maybe some dried parsley and/or basil. This goes in the oven at about 300F until it looks and smells - well - awesome! Talk about flavor explosion! Something about the oven roasted, dutch oven method just really deepens the flavor. So for probably less than $3, I get 3 and a half pints of delicious stock. That's a whopping 14 cups! In the U.S. you pay $2.50 or more for 4 cups. That's 3x the saving and twice the flavor, plus no overload of sodium or MSG. Also the stuff at the store is shelf stable, and what you have made has leached all the vitamins from the bones and veggies into this yummy, vitamin rich liquid. I can't even get premade chicken stock in Mexico. The only thing available is the powdered stuff. This may fulfill the cheap requirement, but it doesn't fulfill the healthy or flavorful part.
So there you have it, go make some yummy broth and then serve your family the best chicken soup they have ever tasted. Seriously, it will knock their socks off!
And while I'm obsessing about food. Here is a yummy meal I made this week. I was shooting for brisket, but what I ended up with was either skirt steak or brisket sliced up Mexican style. Either way it came out super tender and yummy. I paid a little less than $20 for the meat, which is a lot for us, but this makes two meals and this whole meal is only around $2 per person, so that's not too bad. I balance it out with a meal of beans the next day to keep us with in budget. The first meal (pictured below) is slow-cooked brisket in onion gravy and the second meal you make from it is brisket sloppy joes. Click on the link for the recipes.
I can not describe how thankful I am, that I am able to feed my family healthy nutritious foods. It is overwhelming how many mothers around the world would love to be able to provide any type of nutritious foods for their children and simple have no means.
Sam make greens as a side and Lena stirring the gravy.
A little "how to cook greens" demo. Start with fresh greens, heat pan to really hot, add olive oil and greens. Sprinkle in some pepper flakes and one clove of garlic towards the end. That's a Carie original, you can also do it with green beans! Yummo!
I'm not sure what it means if you can not restrain yourself from taking pictures of the food you cook...hmmm....
These babies are the first from the garden. I planted them near the zucchini, but had to pick them early because the zucchini grew so fast it was shading them too much. I also thinned out the turnip patch and used some of the young tender greens in the salad.
And finally, in the name of just going way to far, we are taking just ignoring the line altogether. I mean isn't it bad enough with all the green smoothies for breakfast and salads for lunch! I went and made a raw green dessert! In my defence it was a school project. It was in our book called "A Trip Around the World". We are studying South America and apparently this is a Brazilian recipe. Any of you folks from that area of the world can feel free to either affirm or deny this.
Here I am taking pictures of food again, geez!
Abacate Batido
4 avocados
1/2 cup whipping cream
2/3 cup powder sugar*
6 tablespoons line juice
*the second time I made it I replaced about half the sugar for 3 tablespoons of honey and it worked great, the fam didn't even know. ;)
Put it all in the blender and your done.
I don't know if you folks in the States can make this. I saw the prices of avocados last time I visited...YIKES! But here they are very reasonable, even cheap and limes are plentiful, so what a great recipe! It was a huge success.
A little skeptical even for my clan, can you blame them?
Now that's what I call a culinary success!
