Thug Kitchen

I think it's safe to say that I have a thing for cookbooks. I love reading them, marking what I like, and making little notes next to the recipes. My life is chock full of excitement you guys. Anyway, I happened to stumble upon a cookbook called Thug Kitchen and seeing as how it uses curse words in the recipes and basically reads like I talk, I tossed it in my Amazon cart straight away. A few days later, and a text from my brother questioning my odd choice of literature (He lets me use his Amazon Prime account cause he's the real MVP), this baby landed on my doorstep.

My "thug life" face. The highchair in the background really seals the deal, I think.

What I did not know when I purchased this, because I clearly did my research, is that this is a Vegan...or Vegetarian...whatever, there's no meat in this cookbook. There aren't any animal products used at all actually. So whichever one that is, that's what this book is. Of course, my first thought while flipping through this was "Oh, I can add meat to a lot of these" because I'm a carnivore. Moving on, I bought this book last year sometime and have only made one thing out of it. I'm going to add it into my blog rotation to get some use out of it. 

That being said, there is a little section in this book that tells you how to make your own vegetable broth. I usually just buy it and have never given any thought to re-using my scraps and I thought "What the hell, let's try it!" So I grabbed a gallon bag and started collecting my vegetable scraps and storing the bag in the freezer. It did not take long to fill, as I cook with a lot of veggies, but it did sit in my freezer for a while. Until today.

Basically, you take your bag of scraps and put them in a big pot with about 5 or so cups of water. You want the water to just cover the scraps. 

Add some salt and pepper and a few bay leaves, if you've got em.

Simmer it for about an hour. I did over an hour, because I didn't think it wasn't enough time. By the way, your house will smell ahhhhh-mazing while this is cooking. For real tho. When it's done, take it off the heat and let it cool down. Now. This next part is where it got a little dicey for me. I used a colander that sat inside a big bowl to drain this. 

You don't really need a visual, but I took a picture so there you go.

The first thing I noticed was that it did not stop dripping. I knew I could get a LOT more broth if I squeezed the hell out of those veggies, but no matter how much I tell myself to buy some, I never buy any cheesecloth at the store and I constantly find myself needing it. SO, to substitute, I grabbed the thinnest dish towel I could find and used that .

Annnnnd of course, because I have NO patience, I did not wait for the pot to cool down before I drained it and this was hotter than hell. My poor hands were so raw after this because even though I could have waited for it to cool before squeezing, I didn't. 

The finished product.

I got about 7 cups of broth out of this. Do I have a reason to use it yet? Nope. Will this all go in the freezer for me to forget about until a year goes by and I find it underneath some questionable soup with freezer burn? Most likely. Will I continue to save my scraps for future broth making? You bet. Was it worth it to go through all of the time and dirty dishes only to save about $5? Only time will tell.