To be a good foodie, you must be resourceful, and to be resourceful, you must make stock. Just about anything you are cooking gets better with stock, and having it on hand is infinitely easier and cheaper than buying cans or boxes of the sodium-hyped stuff.
What you need for stock:
1) Any meat bones OR any bits of vegetable remnants (think onion skins, carrot tops, potato peelings, pepper cores... then think ginger skins, tomato seeds and juice, corn cobs, fennel cores)
2) Water
3) Salt and herbs if you feel like it
4) A large pot
5) A fine-sieved strainer/colander or cheesecloth
What to do:
1) Throw all your bits into a fatty pot.
2) Cover with water, plus a little extra. Season if you want.
3) Simmer for an hour.
4) Strain the liquid so you avoid icky particles.
Honestly, if you use a fine enough sieve or even a coffee filter or finely woven cheesecloth, you don't need to wash or fuss over the bits you throw in at the beginning. The heat of the simmer will kill bacteria, and all the little bits will be strained out of your end product.
Results = AMAZING! Freeze the liquid for months to have on hand whenever you need it. Otherwise, use it in, say, the next week. My time at Martha Stewart taught me a very nifty Martha trick: Freeze it in ice cube trays to have one little hunk on-hand at a time anytime you need some flavorful bits of moisture in your recipe. I, for example, do not have a microwave, so everything gets reheated in a frying pan. Imagine the alternative to a bit of stock--all sorts of peas and potatoes and meat half-cold and half-burnt to the bottom of the pan. With the stock, the reheat is ab-fab.
