If you are like me, gremlins put all kinds of food in your fridge that you didn’t even know about until it’s too late. Ever found a cucumber that’s devolved into a puddle of oozing goo? How about the jar of olives that may be from last week – but then again it may be from last year and it will KILL you? If you want to save time and money, try to go through the contents of your fridge before you go grocery shopping, be it on Saturdays or whenever. With the steps below, you may not even have to shop for a few more days.
The first thing you are going to do is get a Sharpie and put it in the flip top butter area of your fridge. You will see it every time you open the fridge, and from now on you will be way more likely to use it to mark dates on any half-opened food.
Next, pull out your crock pot. And, if you don’t own one, order one right now on Ebay or Amazon. It truly does NOT matter what kind. Place the crock pot next to your sink because you are about to re-coup between $10-$50 every week and get healthier in the process. Now, gather ALL of the vegetables that are lingering in your fridge and pantry. You are about to start a meditative soup practice that will change your life. The easiest way to accomplish the making of a soup every 7-10 days is by buying either a pre-cooked chicken from the grocery store – eat it up and save the skin, bones, scraps and congealed juices in the bottom of the container – you can just throw the container in the freezer till Saturday. You can also always have a couple pounds of cheap chicken in your freezer for your soup (usually I buy organic legs, very reasonable at Trader Joe’s – you also often get a discount when you buy 2 chickens at Whole Foods and one of them can be frozen whole – even though it is cooked, it will thaw out just fine-remove most of the meat – recipes below for that- and use the skin and bones for your soup). I know it’s summer, but crock pots don’t generate much heat and if you start now, you’ll have 10+ quarts by the end of summer – plus, they make really nice gifts for people. Seriously, people LOVE homemade chicken stock.
Start by throwing the frozen chicken into the bottom of the crock pot, add any partially used up bottle of wine (red or white is fine) you may have PLUS 1/3 of a cup of cider vinegar – the vinegar leaches the minerals out of the bones and makes the soup more nutritious and flavorful; a TBS of salt or a couple packets of soy sauce also add flavor.
Now retrieve all the veggies you have NOT eaten this week – despite your best intentions. This prep step will go quickly – no agonizing – unless it is gross to touch or smell, just use it! Place all the veggies and the bags of veggies and the cans of half used veggies out on your counter and have at it! The following items are great for making soup stock-here’s how to prep them for your pot:
For the following, wash, scrub and quarter WITH the skins on – the skins have excellent nutrients: potatoes, yams, onions, garlic.
For green/white/yellow/red veggies, rinse well, throw out the really yucky parts (wilted is fine) and chop roughly: cabbage, parsnips, carrots, parsley, turnips, squash, tomatoes, lettuce, fresh herbs, leeks, peas, beans/legumes, mushrooms and celery (these two veggies are particularly good for extra flavor, always try to have them on hand).
Other items that add flavor: hummus, lemon (not too much, makes soup acrid), canned tomatoes, canned corn, canned artichokes etc.
DON’T add: in my experience green/red/orange/yellow peppers make a strange flavor as do avocados and olives. I love beets in a soup, but they add significant sweetness and a red that stains.
DO add: Water, to cover the carcass/veggies – then start to cook. Crockpots vary in terms of how hot they get and cooking time – I usually cook my soup for 6 hours on high. You can experiment, there’s no wrong answer, but I wouldn’t go longer than 8 hours because the stock starts to taste stale.
If I used legs rather than a precooked carcass, then at the end of 3 hours, I remove the cooked chicken from the bone, throw the bones and skin back into the pot and freeze the meat (I chop it before freezing so it can go in the soup or it makes great tacos or pulled chicken –shred it, then microwave it w/1/3 to 1/2 a bottle of your favorite bbq sauce – or make it into a chicken salad – more next Friday on chicken salad).
At the end of 6 hours, turn off the crock pot (most stay on on warm so you have to actually unplug it) to cool the stock – cooling often takes 90 minutes, then get a big bowl, put a colander in it, dump out the ingredients into the colander and strain the soup. You can freeze the stock in quart containers – I skim the fat afterwards, when I thaw it – scrape the fat off just as it is starting to get soft – much easier. Take the solid contents of the colander and throw the whole mess out into doubled up plastic bags-discard where dogs and other animals won’t get it. OR, you can compost everything but the bones.
Next, find all the jam jars with most of the jam gone – use them to make great sweetened vinaigrette for your upcoming week’s salads (classic vinaigrette ratio is 2/3 oil, 1/3 vinegar plus some dijon – about 1 to 2 tsp – to bind the dressing together and give flavor – shake vigorously to emulsify.) Ditto with almost gone mayo, hummus, peanut butter and tahini jars, even unsweetened yogurt or the last bits of a commercial salad dressing you love can become a homemade salad dressing.
Eggs – I hard boil any that I haven’t used that week – my kids like deviled eggs – I often substitute avocado for half the mayo. We can use up a lot of leftover eggs quite quickly by making up a batch. I also make frozen breakfast sandwiches – easiest way to cook the eggs is baking them – just drop each egg into the individual compartments of a well-greased, non-stick muffin tin – I often place on top of each egg a mix of the following: any leftover ham and cheese or salsa, or frozen spinach that I’ve thawed and squeezed to get rid of wateriness. I then bake the whole thing till the eggs are quite firm, pop them out and place them on toasted english muffins. I freeze them individually wrapped in wax paper so they can be thawed/heated by microwave – voila, great breakfasts and/or snacks for the following week.
As mentioned before, half a bottle of bbq sauce over leftover shredded chicken makes a perfectly decent fake pulled chicken. Salsa over cooked ground beef or shredded chicken makes for great easy tacos.
Chop old bread up into croutons and bake them or fry them – nice on top of salads and soups or as the basis for a panzanella salad, bread pudding or egg and bread frittata. Turn any leftover pasta or rice or potatoes into salads with cut up peppers, onions, celery, herbs and salad dressing- if you like an old fashioned taste, your jam vinaigrette can be made thicker with yogurt, mayo or a pureed avocado and used for these salads- add tuna or chopped chicken for a complete meal.
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