Homemade Lamb Stock

I recently posted a recipe for lamb stew and thought that I would also post my recipe for stock. I always make my own stock as I hate food waste, it’s super cheap and really easy. I hadn’t even thought about the health benefits of making your own until I started planning for Whole30 and started to really read food packaging properly! I’ve listed some ingredients below of store bought processed stock:

Wheat Flour, Salt, Sugar, Yeast Extract, Flavour Enhancer (Monosodium Glutamate, Disodium 5′-ribonucleotides), Glucose Syrup Solids, Lamb Fat, Colour (Ammonia Caramel), Flavouring.

(Google some of the big words listed above, interesting reading!)

Anyway, back to my recipe for an natural lamb stock!

Ingredients

lamb bones – minimum 2kg

4 onions

4 carrots

3 tomatoes

4 garlic gloves

2 table spoons olive oil

2 sprigs of rosemary

2 sprigs of thyme

4/5 litres of water

Sea and pepper

(feel free to add any other vegetables you have to hand, root vegetables work particularly well)

• Some people prefer to roast the bones before boiling everything up, I don’t bother with this step though and it still tastes great
• Just add everything to one big pot and bring to the boil
• No need to peel the vegetables just half the onions and the carrots to make more room in the pot needed
• Once it has come to a boil reduce the heat to just a simmer (keep at a very low heat)
• The fat will rise to the surface, so just skim this off periodically
• Simmer for between 5-7 hours
• Using a sieve strain the liquid into a bowl and discard the bones, herbs and vegetables
• Once cooled leave the liquid to sit in the fridge for another hour then skim off any further fat which has floated to the top
• Then freeze in individual portions
• To use the stock, just defrost one or two frozen stock cubes into some hot water and thats it!

An ice cube tray works really well for freezing portions (although, It won’t be very good for ice again if you do this so make sure you have a spare!)

I use the same process for chicken stock, the chicken stock only needs about 3-4 hours (as the bones are less dense) Normally one chicken caracas will do for decent amount of chicken stock.

To save up enough bones for a lamb stock just keep and freeze the lamb bones after each lamb dish.

You can use your stock in so many dishes and it just adds another level of flavour. Use it in stews, soup, paella, broths, a base for many sauces and gravy (the list goes on!)