A Bit About Stocks

It makes a great difference when you’re making your soups and stews that you have proper stock. You can of course use stock cubes - I’d recommend Knorr as the best of them. You can buy those tubs of bouillon powder, which is much the same thing really, and you can get jars of stock in upmarket supermarkets like Waitrose or in delicatessens, but the easiest and best is your own home-made stock.

What I do, with the help of a pressure cooker, is to cook up a whole lot of stock and then, taking the lid off, reduce it down until it is quite concentrated and then freeze it in ice-cube trays. You can pop out the cubes into a bag later and label them. You then have ready-made stock to which you can add liquid, extra water or wine or whatever you want when you’re cooking your dish. A pressure cooker is handy for this because it takes half the normal time but you can do it in an ordinary saucepan too.