Freezer stock bags for richer (and more frugal) stock!

Inspired by another thread, I realized this might be a good tip to share.

If you like to cook, you can save a fair bit by having a stock bag or tub. I use a large ziplock to save bones, vegetable tops and peelings and so on for stock making. You can have more than one bag going if you regularly make certain dishes - for example you might want to save shrimp shells and fish bones/ heads in one, beef bones in another, chicken in a third, plus vegetable odds and ends that will compliment the flavor. Or you can just throw it in together!

Then, when you're making stock for soups etc, you can defrost your stock bag and boil it up with whatever fresh things you have to add (perhaps a recently dismembered chicken carcass or some beef bones from the butcher).

Collecting everything you could possibly make stock from is a great way to add cheap flavor to all sorts of dishes, although you might still need to pep your final dish up with some actual stock/ bouillon cubes or 'goo' - I really love stock-in-a-jar; it lasts well and you get a lot out of it, plus stock in a jar is a bit more frugal than cubes as you're just using what you need. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post the one I use most on here, but there aren't that many of them and I'm sure most of them are pretty good.

I have a full guide to stock making somewhere on another computer; if people are interested I'll see if I can dig it out and add it to this post (or a new one if I get distracted).

One tip for new stock makers... at some point, pretty much every cook I know has made the mistake of throwing the stock away and keeping the bones. Don't forget to put a pot under your colander! If you do, don't panic, just boil it up again. You won't get as much from a second boil but you will get something. Typically I boil a lot of stock mixes twice anyway if they have beef or chicken bones.

I've been making stock for twenty-odd years so I'm happy to answer questions!