Homemade stocks are one of my favorite shortcuts for an immediate flavor boost in all sorts of dishes. They cost nothing if you save vegetable trimmings, shrimp shells, and other scraps. They’re easy, adaptable, and take minimal effort. Save the scraps in a zip-close bag until it’s full, and you can make potful of stock to freeze in usable portions so that when you need it, it’s ready to go.

This week, I share my shrimp stock recipe in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon. It’s the bonus of buying raw shrimp in the shell and cleaning it yourself—beyond the improvements in flavor, texture, cost, and more that come from choosing raw over precooked, peeled shrimp. The recipe lists ingredients in whole counts, but you can save scraps to approximate equivalents. Bag and freeze enough tops and bottoms of onions and celery from nightly meals until you have the equivalent of two whole each. Zest the lemons before you add them to the stock pot, freezing the zest if you don’t have an immediate use for it. Fresh herbs that have gone soft and wilted, but not mushy, are ideal for use in stocks like this one.

Learn more about buying shrimp and get the complete recipe for Homemade Shrimp Stock in my column.

Make it, share it.
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Twice as Tasty

I’ve already shared my recipe for Homemade Vegetable Stock in my Flathead Beacon column, and you can find other stock recipes on the blog made from corncobs and other scraps, including versions you can make on the fly as you trim vegetables for the evening meal.

I use stocks in various simple ways, like substituting stock for water if I’m steaming rice, quinoa, or vegetables and splashing it into a sauté pan when making a sauce or braising potatoes. If you start clicking on links in the recipe index, you’ll find lots of complete recipes that use stock. Here are some of my favorites.

• Shrimp and Green Vegetable Risotto
• Sunshine Risotto
• Mushroom-Filled Blini
• Corn and Potato Chowder
• Tomato, Potato, and Garlic Soup
• Vegetarian Mushroom Gravy

You can learn more about stocks and scraps in this blog post. Learn more about the trays I use for freezing stocks here.

Want more Twice as Tasty recipes? Get my books! Click here to order a personally signed, packaged, and shipped copy of The Complete Guide to Pickling directly from me. I also share tasty ways to use pickles in The Pickled Picnic; it’s only available here.