— Jody Criman

I had some, made some stock last week. So these are vegetables that I'm gonna put in the freezer, but I've got some, uh, celery, I've got some leftover onions, I've got carrot bottoms. I even saved the stems from fresh tomatoes because all of this has flavor. And the other most important thing is I also use the skins because the skins will give it a wonderful, wonderful color. Uh, sometimes when you are using a plant-based, well, all vegetables toast are plant-based, but sometimes they get a, a kind of a gray color to them. And since we eat with our eyes first, having the orange from the carrots and the, uh, Bermuda onion peel, uh, we'll give it a lot of flavor. So, but back to your original question, because here's what I use, I, when I make a stock, I use scraps because that's just the way I kind of have morphed into what I learned when I was a student at Rouxbe. So the reason, part of the reason for that assignment is that it's a wonderful way to hone your knife skills, because having good knife skills as a chef is probably one of the best tools that you can have in the kitchen. So, um, referring specifically to carrots, the finer that they are diced, the more orange that your stock will be. If you're just gonna throw in a big hunk of carrot like this, it's gonna give it flavor, but it's not gonna give it that much color. So the smaller the vegetable, the more color you will get, whether it's, uh, peppers or red onions or carrots or even mushrooms. Um, those will be some tips that I would use if you wanna have a colorful stock. But as you can see, I work with, with, with, uh, bear elements here, and I just throw everything into a pot, put some fresh herbs into it, boil it up, and then simmer it for a long time, and it comes out beautifully. And also what I love about the assignment with either the cabbage or the fa, is that when a student writes at the end, it was so delicious, I'll never buy boxed stock again. I always know by that statement that they have met the, um, objectives of the assignment. So that was an excellent question, Jody. And, uh, if you like colorful food, keep chopping away. So that is good. And thank you, uh, very much. Patrick has just loaded the list of, uh, 100, um, vegan cookbooks from Veg News. So, uh, congratulations again to everyone on the list. Um, and this is, uh, you can also use peels. Yes, Jody, you can use peels. I prefer to use peels except it's really funny. I'm teaching a class in a couple of weeks, and the first, um, for the Charlie cart, uh, the first part of the recipe says to peel your carrots. Well, I don't peel my carrots. I scrub them really, really well. Because remember that when those carrots are growing in the ground, all of the nutrients that are in the soil are actually right in that skin. And I wanna get as many nutrients as I can. So very rarely do I have, uh, vegetable peels. So, um, I'm not sure what the reason is for peeling the carrots. I think that there are some people in the universe who have only ever peeled carrots. So maybe, uh, it's kind of like, uh, teaching people what they know and feel most comfortable with. But, uh, personally, I'm a scrubber, not a peeler. Uh, hope that that helps, and I hope you continue making beautiful soups.