Question:
When making stock, what are some ideas to use the leftover vegetables. I blended them with some soaked cashews to make a veggie dip. Any other ideas?
— Tammy Flolid
Answer:
So that's a great question and, and I actually get that question a lot from, um, our stock making course, our stock making, um, task. Uh, now the in quite honestly, if you're making the stock correctly and you're cooking that you're gonna get most of the flavor and most of the nutrients out of your vegetables. Um, as you're cooking with stock, the the vegetable, the vegetables will release the nutrients and the flavor into the water and what you're left, um, what you're left to it is just kind of a mushy vegetable. It doesn't have a lot of taste. Um, and definitely I doesn't have a whole lot of nutrients that are left in it, but there are some, so a lot of people do like to be able to use those cuz um, you don't wanna just throw them out. Um, now typically the way I avoid that to begin with is I actually make my stocks using scraps. So I'll use things like onion, peels, the peelings from carrots, the ends of carrots, the inside of peppers, and I'll save all those in a baggy and then put them in my freezer when I'm done cutting them up, um, on a nightly basis or whenever I do that, and then save them for the end of the week or when that bag gets full and then I'll make a stock out of it. Then I'm not, uh, I don't feel as guilty about composting or throwing those things out because I've already used them once and I'm using them a second time to be able to make the stock. Um, now some other variations, if you're using something that's just not the scraps from the vegetables, like we show in, uh, the the stock making task, um, I get that where you're taking all these nice vegetables and your, you know, your carrots and your celery that are all just the actual carrots themselves, not just appeals. Um, and it feels like it's really weird to be able to throw those out or just compost them, but you have gotten most of the, uh, nutrients out of those. Uh, a lot of people do want to do things like making, um, uh, a dip is a very popular thing to be able to kind of blend those up. Um, I have, uh, seen people like, uh, especially when they're trying to get their kids to eat more vegetables or they'll blend them up into a pasta sauce so they have more of the vegetables than the pasta sauce. Um, again, you're getting most of the nutrients out of it before you're, you know, as you're making the stock. So just cooking those typically and putting them in might be a better way to do that if you're trying to get your kids more of the vitamins from those. Um, what I used to do a lot was I would actually use some of the, the leftover scraps and the things like that and I'd mix into dog food for my dogs, especially carrots and stuff like that. Um, no kind of strong ingredients. They would really like that to be able to have it and it would have them just eat their dog food a little bit quicker and, um, they'd get more nutrients from it as well too. And it was something like a nice treat that they love to be able to do those too. Now, some other ideas you can definitely do, like the cashew to be able to add a fat into it is wonderful. If you wanna make, um, you know, a dip, you can blend them up and do like a spread or something like that cuz you will get some flavor out of it as well too. Um, but what I would recommend is adding some other spices to it if you're going to do that as well, just to be able to get, uh, a deeper, um, flavor out of those. Because again, if you're doing it properly, you're getting most of the flavor out of those vegetables. Um, but experimenting a little bit to be able to see what works great for you. Um, I've seen people use 'em for all kinds of different things including, um, like I said, the pasta sauce, but some people even put 'em into, um, you know, like lasagnas or different like, you know, kind of, uh, pasta bakes and things like that as well, um, which worked fine. Uh, you just have to remember that the texture is gonna be really, really squishy. You're not gonna get a lot of tooth peel out of it and you're not gonna get a ton of flavor or nutrients out of it. But, um, you know, looking at ways to be able to reuse those and not have a lot of waste as great, uh, composting is always great as well because you can take those vegetables and grow new ones with them. So that's a couple little things that I would recommend for it, Tammy. Um, and I'm sure the dip actually came out pretty good, so that's a great use for it as well.
