When starting the stock, keep track of how many cups of water you’ve used. After cooking the stock for hours and straining it and all that, return it to the pot and boil it down until there’s not much left and it’s pretty gel-ly. This part is kind of tricky to get exact, but you want enough left that you can fill an ice-cube tray such that each cube corresponds to the amount of water you added in the beginning. Really, if you boil it down to a bit less than that, that’s fine because the cubes will just be more flavorful. What I do is this: if I used 8 cups of water, I fill eight ice cube spaces with water from the faucet, then pour it into a container to eyeball how much liquid it is. Then I eyeball the stock and just try to get it close. It takes some practice but after doing it a few times, I get very close.

When you’ve boiled the stock down, let it cool (doesn’t take long since there’s not much liquid left), then pour into the ice cube tray. Freeze. Unmold the cubes of reduced stock and store in a freezer bag; because of the high gelatin content, these will have kind of a mushy texture if you don’t freeze them long/low enough, and if you don’t freeze them enough, they can get stuck together in the bag. It takes a full 24 hours, even in my very good freezer, to get them solid enough.

Now, whenever you need stock, simply take out a cube and add a cup of water. This saves a LOT of space.

I found some ice-cube trays that are made of silicone, so they are very flexible for unmolding (also saves you the hassle of the stock cubes getting slightly mushy), and they also happen to be perfectly square, which is just cool-looking.

You can freeze egg whites in these too, one per cube, and save in freezer bags, which is nice if you’ve been making yolk-heavy recipes and don’t want to waste the whites. I also freeze food scraps for vermicomposting after I’ve run them through the food processor. Freezing stuff in ice cube trays works for a lot of stuff.

After we get done with the crockpot and run it through the sieve…Are we supposed to put it in the fridge to cool down and the fat to rise to the top to skim? All the other recipes talk about that but not yours. I am assuming its the same thing right?

Thanks!

Holly