— Mitch Miglis

So favorite veggies to use. I always just use my scraps. I, you know, you can definitely custom build your stock for a use case. So if I'm doing like a, I don't, if I'm doing a, a mushroom gravy, right? For a holiday thing, I'll usually use mostly mushrooms in it. I'll use onions and mushroom. Um, I might add a bay leaf and maybe some thyme at the end of it. Um, you know, but I'll specifically use those and I'll use dried shiitakes. I'll use mushroom stems that I've saved and frozen as well too. Um, but by and large, most of the time I'm using onion scraps, so like the outsides of the onions and the skins. I'll use the internal core and the kind of the top of peppers. Um, I'll use celery, like the bits on it. I'll use the scraping like the, um, the peels from, um, carrots as well too. Um, and then I'll always have the mushroom, you know, bottoms and I even usually put dried mushrooms like shiitakes or something into my broth as well. Those are my main kind of go-tos are the scrapped ones to be able to do that. And if I wanna blunt, you know, uh, do something more to it, I can, but I kind of keep that very simple and just as that I'm not adding else anything else into it because I can always add it when I'm cooking something. Like if I'm gonna turn that into a certain style of soup, I can kind of take it in that direction. But that's usually my base. Um, what veggies do not add. So very pungent things, right? So the asparagus is a great example of that. Uh, garlic, you know, garlic turns very bitter when you're cook overcooking it. Um, you know, so things that are very pungent you wanna keep out of it. Things that will discolor like beets, right? Or beets scraps. So just turn everything, um, red. Same with cabbage. Cabbage is too pungent as well, so I wouldn't put the cabbage in there. Um, either. Uh, how long do I simmer? I usually cook my stock long. I'll usually cook it for about an hour and 20 minutes. And what I do is I bring it up to a boil and as soon as it boils, I bring it all the way down to a very low simmer. I'll do that for about an hour to an hour and a half. Um, you know, and that plus or minuses, you'll, you can see just by the color of it how it works. And then, um, I will strain it off. I basically put it, um, you knowis, um, over a jar basically, or a couple big jars and then strain it off into that as well too. So, um, you can filter it through like a cheesecloth or something like that if you want it to get very clean. I don't usually worry about that much as as much, but if you're in a fine dining restaurant, you need it to be as clean as you possibly can. So, um, you can filter it off, I don't mind just a little bit, um, you know, of fiber in it as well too. Uh, can you ref, can you I freeze it? Yes, I will freeze it and make it into ice cubes basically. Uh, so you can, if you're not using it, you can put it into ice cubes. I usually have like, kinda the bigger cubes that I'll freeze. Um, and then you can just add it to different things as you need to. You can add it into a dish and let it, you know, thaw out and kind of melt down, um, depending on how you need it.