So I mentioned yesterday coming back to a freezer which had been off since Friday night and of course we had some catastrophes so I spent a lot of yesterday cooking which has led to another article!

Several years ago (more than I care to think about!) I worked in a kitchen with two great chefs at different times where I learnt a lot about cooking and ingredients. One thing I learnt was how to make the best gravy which now I have adapted to make stock which I freeze in batches for making gravies and sauces.

I can hear you thinking “oh no I lost all my stock” – nope! To make stock I need bones so when we have any bones left over from a meal, be it from a roast chicken, duck or just from pork chops, I freeze them all until I have enough to make my stock. It was these bones which were just one of the things I couldn’t bear to just throw away so stock I have made.

So to begin, put all the bones into a roasting tray and pop into the oven. Leave for about 30 – 40 minutes so any fats are drained from the bones and it is all completely defrosted. In the meantime I have a large steamer sauce pan, the sort than has a strainer which sits inside the pan with about an inch between the base of strainer and bottom of pan. Roughly chop some onions and put in this gap. In the strainer pop some bay leaves and the bones from the oven. Normally I just top up with water (and wine of course) and sprinkle in some pepper and mustard powder (no salt). But this time I still had the water from the ham I cooked last week (I had kept this to make impromptu sauces), so I popped half of this in, then filled with the water and wine. I was worried this might be too salty so I added a potato, again roughly chopped, as this would then draw in any salt. I put this on the hob, heated until it was boiling, reduced the heat and left to simmer for a good number of hours – which also filled the house with a glorious smell.

When removed from the heat put a sieve over another big sauce pan, remove a couple of ladles at a time of the bone / stock mixture and put into the sieve. Press through any juices, remove bones (which can now be discarded), put any meat bits from this mixture in a blender and discard any other leftovers in the sieve. Continue doing this until you get to the end of the mixture in the strainer. Blend all the meat bits, with a little of the stock, until liquidised and pop into the sauce pan with the stock mixture. Take the onions from under the strainer and again put into a blender and blend under liquidised and pop into the same pan. On this occasion I also had to make sure I discarded the potatoes.

Bring back to boil and simmer, stirring occasionally, usually at this point I add seasoning and sometimes Worcester sauce to taste but on this occasion it was perfect. So all was left was to bag up into portions to pop back into the freezer. I have found 4 ladles per pack is perfect for 2/3 and you can always defrost more than 1 if necessary.

Well that’s my first story from saving the freezer. Now I’m of to pour myself a nice glass of chilled Australian Chardonnay.