Lots of Broth on Hand - Low on Ideas

My gentleman friend cooked chicken curry for the two of us last week. He soaked the chicken in salt water before adding them to the crockpot to make them more tender and flavorful. Then he realized that there wouldn't be enough leftovers for his brother, so he hurriedly cooked up some more chicken in a pot of salted water in order to add the already cooked chicken to the curry sauce in the crock. He was about to pour all that chicken stock down the drain when I stopped him. I asked him to put it in some containers for me to bring home. Since it wasn't cool yet when I left, he didn't bring it until the next day. I repackaged it into my own containers and froze it for future use. I have about a quart and a cup of chicken broth frozen.


Yesterday, I re-cooked the bone portion of my ham with frozen green beans in water. Because my daughter doesn't like potatoes cooked in with the ham, I left them out. There was plenty of ham stock in the pot, so when I was putting everything away, I poured off the stock into containers and froze them along with the green beans we didn't eat. I have around 30 oz. of ham stock now in the freezer. 


I'm going to try to make some ham salad with some of the ham with my meat grinder. Maybe even some ham croquettes. But, I've also never used ham stock to make anything before. This will all be new to me.


I'm thinking of making some bean soup with the pinto beans I also cooked this week (I have no idea what has got into me with all this cooking - maybe Mom's paying a visit this week?) I think I'll add some carrots and potatoes, maybe some celery and onion. I love pintos and so does my daughter, but neither of us has ever had pinto bean soup before. How different can it be from regular bean soup? I used some of the ham to flavor the beans near the end of their cooking, so soup seems to be a natural extension of that. By the way, the beans are frozen in containers, too.


I would love to have some more ideas on using the ham stock (other than cabbage - that is NOT a vegetable of choice here). If you leave me comments and have an idea, I'd really appreciate it.