Now before you worry that I’m getting all Martha Stewart on you or anything, let me assure you: stock’s a no-brainer to make. It doesn’t require fancy ingredients or elaborate techniques and, at its most basic, involves little more than throwing a bunch of very roughly chopped ingredients into a big pot of water.

After all, stock is just flavored water. It can be flavored with meat, with seafood, with bones, with veggies, in an endless array of delicious combinations. If you’re being a purist, stock is unsalted, the rationale being that since you will be using it to cook some other, more involved dish, at a later point, it makes more sense to add the appropriate amount of salt for whatever specific dish your concocting. You can make stock from fresh, whole ingredients, or from leftover trimmings and scraps that you’ve accumulated in your freezer over time. It’s cheap. It’s easy. It’s even sort of meditative.

What to put in …
Stock is a very personal substance, and what you put in will depend both on what you have available, and your own taste quirks. I tend to keep my freezer well-stocked with chicken and veggie stocks only, since it’s rare that I have the necessary ingredients to make beef, veal or seafood stocks. Onions and carrots are probably the only ingredients that always make an appearance in my "recipes" – scallions, celery, mushrooms, garlic, parsley, and potato peelings also sometimes make their way in, though usually only if I’ve got any of those items leftover from something else I’ve cooked. I don’t think I’ve ever made the exact same stock twice. It’s an extremely flexible recipe.