One of the things that frustrates me most about gardening is not being able to use all the vegetables before they spoil especially root vegetables like potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes but also squash and some fruits. I simply can’t preserve everything.
For a few years we have discussed the feasibility of building a root cellar but our problem is location and soil type. As I have said before, we live on marginal land - previously strip mined and not reclaimed. We are building soil from the ground up (literally) even in our grassy yard. Putting in a root cellar would mean digging through shale and bedrock. Not an easy job.
I also want a location close to the house so I can get potatoes for dinner without trudging through snow and ice.
What to do?
Oddly, the solution presented itself when we decided to use two indoor wood burners instead of the outdoor/whole house burner. The whole house burner heated the floors of both the basement and main floor. It kept us toasty. Unfortunately it also overheated vegetables stored in our basement, ruining them and making longer term storage impossible.
The indoor wood burners heat only the main floor, leaving the basement cool. We are also lucky to have a walkout basement with a small anteroom which doesn’t have the house above it. It sits exposed on the roof and part of the walls. The rest of the room is underground. It stays cooler than the rest of the basement during the winter. We decided to use this room as a ‘cold storage room’.
You can see that part of the room is below ground . We access the room from the unheated basement.
The first thing we did was insulate the door, covering that window and the small window in the wall to keep the room dark. Bob used 1” insulating board sized to cover the openings.
A double ‘wall’ of tarps covers the entrance to the main basement to further darken the room and to keep the temperature down.
The light is blocked by the insulation board. The door is locked, but can easily be unlocked and the board removed if we need access to the basement from this door.
There are stairs which access the basement from the main floor.
I got an inexpensive weather station with a sensor that is placed in the room to monitor the temp and humidity. The readout from the sensor is at the top of the basement steps.
The weather gage before it was installed.
This is a simple way to monitor the temp and humidity of the cold room.
Next we bought shelving from a big box building supply and lined the walls. The shelves are plastic with an open grid pattern so air moves around the stored produce. We received some boxes of fruit and placed those on partial pallets about 4” off the floor.
The shelving is stackable so we made 2 shorter shelves rather than one tall shelf. We were only able to get one set but will be buying more when the store carries them again. (Supply issues)
Note the open grid to allow air movement.
We were given some large boxes of fruit so we used 1/2 pallets to keep them off the cement.
We are not storing apples in the room because they give off a gas which matures the other fruits and vegetables.
Our biggest challenge is maintaining the humidity high enough to prevent the produce from drying out and shriveling. We are still working on a solution for this.
So far we are very pleased with the room. I stored pies there for Thanksgiving, have potatoes, onions, carrots, sweet potatoes, pears, and oranges put by. I even have some wine partially chilled.
I needed to keep pies cool overnight but there was no room in the refrigerator. The cool room kept them the perfect temperature. I covered the pumpkin pie with a large, upside down bowl, since I only had one storage container big enough for a pie. Use what is in your hands!
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Speaking of food
Grocery prices continue to rise. Yesterday, Bob was at a large grocery store and an average sized ham, not a specialty ham, cost more than $50. That’s a huge chunk of a grocery budget!
I get shell-shocked as I walk through the meat department, don’t you? We are lucky to be in the position to raise our beef and poultry, but most people aren’t.
I want to make my large meat purchases go as far as I can so let’s talk about breaking down a whole turkey/ large chicken down to provide meat for multiple meals. I'm not talking about leftovers for a week, either.
I usually roast a turkey in the oven or electric roaster. I’ll do a whole chicken the same way. Sometimes, I’ll roast two chickens at the same time to save electricity and time.
A turkey breast we bought before Thanksgiving (10# for 0.98/lbs) and a whole chicken which we raised and butchered.
Once the bird is cooked, I remove it from the roaster and break it down further. If you want to serve the bird whole, go ahead but save all the drippings and bits in the roasting pan. I just set the roaster and liquid aside until after the meal.
After dinner take the remaining bird and remove as much meat as possible. Set it aside. I sort the meat into breast meat for sandwiches and dark meat for casseroles or soups. The remaining carcass and skin go back into the roaster or a crockpot. Don't worry if there are bits of meat you don't remove, it will come off when you are simmering the carcass. You are going to make stock with these parts. If your bird came with a bag of gizzards, put them in the roaster, too. Add water to cover. Turn on low (crockpot) or about 300 degrees (roaster). (If you don’t have either of these, you can use a heavy-bottomed stockpot/pan. It needs to be big enough to hold the carcass and water and it needs a lid. Keep it going at a slow simmer. You may need to occasionally add more water.)
I add an onion, celery, and carrots to the stock pot. This is a good time to use the tops and bottom of celery - the stuff you usually throw out. I keep these parts in a large baggie in the freezer. I season my stock as I use it so I’m not adding salt or pepper at this time. I also add a ½ cup of apple cider vinegar. This will pull more nutrients from the carcass but won’t affect the flavor.
Now - the meat. White meat is great for sandwiches, with a gravy over biscuits, as a croquette (a shredded, breaded,pan-fried meat patty), and any of the 10,000 ways to use poultry. Chicken and turkey are interchangeable in recipes, though I find turkey to have a richer flavor, so you want to keep that in mind.
Dark meat can be used in casseroles but I like it in soup. I cut it into cubes before adding it. It seems to get stringy if you use larger pieces. I’ll also mix it with the white meat for chicken salad, etc.
I will prep the meat then put it into freezer baggies in meal sized amounts. Usually 1 - 1 ½ cups per bag. Label and freeze. When you want a quick meal, grab a bag and half the prep is done. Think outside the box - fajitas, sweet & sour chicken, white chili, added to a dry chicken soup mix, with ramen noodles.
Once meat has been frozen, I use it in a recipe I am heating/cooking. I don’t use frozen meat for sandwiches or salads.
Back to the stock —-
I will let my turkey/chicken carcass simmer for 24 - 36 hours. Add water as needed, but allow the liquid to become a rich golden color. I turn off the heat and let it cool down for a half hour or so. Remove the carcass and sad-looking vegetables. The bones should be almost crumbly if you press on them. I compost the vegetables-there isn’t any nutrition left. As a side note, the bones can be well rinsed, crumbled to small pieces, and put on your garden.
Strain the broth through a mesh strainer and set aside. Remove and save bits of meat which came off the bones while cooking - there will be more than you think. Toss the rest of the solids from the broth. You can use cheesecloth to strain the broth, too. There will be fewer solids if you do this.
After the broth cools I’ll either bag it up for the freezer or cook it down more to make it a concentrated broth. I also put the reserved meat bits into the baggies with the broth. When I have time, I'll pressure can the stock in quart jars for shelf-stable storage.
We are having turkey fajitas tonight - I have the cooked meat (last of my leftovers from Thanksgiving) marinading in the wet seasoning. I will add onion and pepper before heating it in the cast iron skillet. On the left are 2 quarts of turkey broth. It's dark and rich.
You can (barely) see the bits of turkey in the bottom of the front jar.
This is known as a bone broth: rich, full of nutrition and an absolute treasure to use when you are cooking.
Make a sauce, boil noodles in it, use as a soup base or in any recipe that calls for chicken bouillon . It is great as a first meal when someone is sick - so full of nutrients to heal and nurture. Just add salt and whatever seasoning you want. Let the sick person sip it throughout the day.
By breaking down a large bird you can have multiple meals without getting left-over fatigue. You can have a poultry dish every week and not spend any additional money on meat for those meals. A variety of flavor profiles at your main meal will make your family more satisfied at the table. For example, Monday - Pork chops, Tuesday - Meatloaf, Weds - Pasta/Italian, Thursday - Chicken Croquettes, Friday - Fish, Saturday - Pizza, Sunday - Roast Beef.
Different tastes. Different textures. Different seasonings.
The only down-side is no one will want to go out for dinner anymore.
Look for ideas and recipes on Pinterest, in older cookbooks, WW2 pamphlets, rationing recipe books and other vintage reprints. Use the search “cooked chicken recipe”.
As you put the broth into the freezer and throw out those crumbly bones, you can be satisfied that you got every bit of nutrition out of that bird and your money’s worth from the grocery.
Cha-Ching!$
Have a great holiday season. Many Blessings
Polly
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