Column by Gayle Bryant

For The Daily News

I like variety in our dinners but there are a few seasonal standbys that always make it into our weekly menu plan simply because they are too frugal to pass up. For spring and summer it’s salads full of home-grown garden veggies and a small amount of protein tossed in for a complete meal. And in the fall and winter, it’s healthy soups made from rich homemade stock.

Soups are probably as old as the history of cooking. The act of combining various ingredients in a large pot to create a nutritious, filling, easily digested, simple food was a wise use of limited resources. Early cooks would use leftover bones and wild herbs or vegetables to concoct a healthy food that was able to feed many with very few ingredients.

When you were sick did your grandmother swear by her homemade chicken soup? Sally Fallon, who wrote the book “Broth Is Beautiful,” says this, “Science validates what our grandmothers knew. Rich homemade chicken broths help cure colds. Stock contains minerals in a form the body can absorb easily — not just calcium but also magnesium, phosphorus, silicon, sulphur and trace minerals. It contains the broken-down material from cartilage and tendons — stuff like chondroitin sulphates and glucosamine, now sold as expensive supplements for arthritis and joint pain.”

But the health benefits aren’t only in the bone broths. Vegetable broths can not only use up what you might have thrown away (think cheap) but can also provide a powerful dose of nutrition in each spoonful. Well washed or organic vegetable skins often contain nutrients equal to or greater than the actual vegetable. There’s chlorophyll in cucumber skins, antioxidants and fiber in potato and sweet potato skins, beta carotene in carrot peelings and the list goes on.

So how can you take advantage of the nutritional and financial benefits of homemade stock?

— Save any vegetable peelings you might have previously thrown away in a gallon-size bag in your freezer. Toss in onion and garlic skins, onion ends, pepper ends and seeds and membranes, celery ends and leaves, cucumber ends and peels, salad trimmings, herb stems, potato or sweet potato peelings, mushroom stems and carrot shavings. Even citrus peelings or fresh ginger peelings can be used. Just don’t use sulfurous vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage. When your bag is full you’re ready to make your stock.

— Save your Thanksgiving turkey carcass, your Christmas ham bone or any fish bones in the freezer for future broths.

— Use your stock as the liquid while cooking rice. Use as a soup base and add sliced vegetables, pasta, beans, rice or meat chunks for nutritious lunch or dinner. Use in any recipe that calls for broth.

A few weeks ago I shared a recipe for homemade chicken broth from a roast crockpot chicken. Here are some other stock recipes you can use.

Vegetable stock

1 gallon freezer bag full of vegetable peelings

12 cups water

1 bay leaf

6-8 peppercorns

1 teaspoon salt

Empty the gallon baggie of veggie trimmings into a large stock pot, along with the bay leaf and peppercorns. Add 8 cups of water and see where your water level is. Remember it. This is the point where you will refill after reducing. Go ahead and add the other 4 cups of water and the salt. Resist the urge to stir.

Bring to a nice simmer over high heat, then reduce heat to maintain the simmer.

Never ever stir! You can use the back of a spoon to gently push the veggies down into the liquid every now and then. If you do stir, your stock will come out cloudy. By resisting the urge to stir, your stock will be clear. If it does cloud up, it’s still good, just not nearly as pretty.

When the liquid has reduced to 4 cups, add another 4 cups of water and continue to simmer. Do this two more times, for a total of three times.

After the final reduction, remove from heat and strain through a colander. Squeeze all of the stock out of the veggies, then discard the veggies.

Strain the stock through a sieve, and then strain again through a fine mesh. I use a permanent coffee filter for this step.

At this point, I pour the stock off into plastic cups in 2-cup portions. Let cool completely at room temperature, then freeze. Cooling your stock off too quickly results in clouding.

To reconstitute, melt an 2-cup portion of the frozen stock, add an equal amount of water and a teaspoon of salt. Stir well to dissolve the salt.

This recipe makes 8 cups of condensed stock and reconstitutes to 16 cups.

Simple beef stock

3-4 lbs beef bones

3 carrots, broken in several pieces

2 medium onions, quartered

3 stalks celery, broken in several pieces

2 leeks, chopped

1 sprig thyme

2 fresh bay leaves

2 garlic cloves, unpeeled (more if you like)

6-8 peppercorns

Place the beef bones in a large heavy pot and cover with cold water by about two inches.

Bring to a simmer over medium heat and skim the sum which rises to the top—this should take about five minutes.

Add the remaining ingredients and more cold water so that everything is covered by at least two inches.

Bring the stock to a simmer again, skimming as necessary.

When the stock is simmering (Do NOT allow it to boil), partially cover and maintain at a very slow simmer for four to five hours.

If the water level gets too low, add boiling water to the pot.

Skim as necessary.

When the vegetables and the bones have given their all to the broth, strain the broth and discard the solids.

Set the stock, uncovered in the refrigerator until the fat has risen to the top and solidified.

Remove and discard the fat.

When the stock is cold, store in the refrigerator for up to three days or in the freezer.

For more frugal tips visit Gayle’s blog at http://grocerycartchallenge.blogspot.com. For questions or comments e-mail Gayle at gaylebryant6@hotmail.com.