Soup Stock

Hooray for my first time ever using my crock pot! So excited because this means I can cook things without heating up my entire apartment (which will be useful when summer finally makes an appearance, ahem!)

I decided to make soup stock, since I’ve been reading about how good it is for you, and the crock pot made it super easy! I didn’t really follow a recipe because everyone seems to say the same thing: put meat with bones in a pot. Add veggies, salt, pepper, and water. Cook it forever.

Into the pot I put:
– 3 frozen chicken drumsticks (left over from the mango and nectarine tagine)
– ~a pound of “pork bones for soup” that I got for like $2 from whole foods – so nice! There was a decent amount of meat on these bones, which was nice too
– 4 carrots
– ~8 mushrooms
– 1 onion
– salt and pepper
– maybe 9 cups of water
Slow cooked it overnight on Low.

In the morning I skimmed out the broth, made one thing of soup using some broth, the dead veggies, and some of the meat, and then went to work on separating the bones from the soft stuff because I am planning to make bone broth at some point.

(Side note: The bones part is not for the faint-of-heart! I may not be a good judge because I think my last encounter with a pork soup bone was what prompted my 3-year vegetarian stint in Jr. High… But seriously, you pretty much have to use your hands to pull off all the meat, and there were all these different hard parts that I had no idea what part of the animal they might have come from – it was very intimate.)

The stock turned out delicious. And I think you are technically supposed to discard the veggies and make new ones for the soup, but I was lazy, and they tasted fine!