There are 3 ways to preserve your homemade broths, be it beef, chicken or vegetable stock. (broth and stock are indeed different, however are interchangeable in your recipes). With all the following preservations, remove as much fat as possible. You can freeze the fat for use later in soap recipes.
The first is canning. Pour your hot broth into a pint canning jar and pressure can 20 minutes at 10 lbs (11lbs on dial gauges). Allow to cool for 24 hours and then stack up in your pantry.
Next is freezing.
Pour your broth evenly into an ice tray. I highly suggest you line your tray with parchment paper or foil. Allow to freeze, remove and store in a freezer bag. Each cube is 1/8 cup of stock. This is also considered a cold bouillon cube.
And finally, and my favorite, dehydration.
Pour 1 cup of stock onto a fruit rollup tray and place it into my dehydrator. Set it on the meat setting or 145F. It tends to withdraw from the center and pool along the edges. Let sit overnight.
Once dry, peel and crack off the tray onto foil.
Tightly fold up your foil and place into a zip-lock type bag. If you have a food saver I would use it, and remove as much air as possible.
You end up with a little packet of flavoring that equals 1 cup broth. Kind of like those Ramen packets. You can do more than 1 cup at a time, just be sure you keep track of how much you use. You will need to add the same amount of water to rehydrate it.
This packet makes 3 cups of broth.
5 comments:
Oooo. I never thought of dehydrating it! I can and freeze it all the time, but that takes up a lot of room. I'd rather have the space for freezing bones and meat trimmings until I have a big batch. Thanks for the idea!
The saving room is the main reason I like doing it this way.
How long is the shelf life for the dehydrated broth? Seems like such a good idea to me and very space saving. Anna
Could you also send it thru your blender or food processor and make it into a powder?
Anna, 6 months to a year in the food saver package in a cabinet, indefinitely in the freezer.
seyrey, you could but you will not be able to walk away from the dehydrator. The thicker parts will be a texture akin to fruit leather. You will need t constantly check on your drying broth and spread it out as it pools. If that isn't a concern, then yes go for it. It will not be like the bouillon crumbles that you buy at the store, that is made with cornstarch.
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