Stock is up there with salt and butter when it comes ingredients. There’s always a reason to keep some around. This winter I’ve been making soups and risottos for lunch at least once a month and stock adds so much more flavor than water.

That, however, is not the best thing about stock. The best thing about stock is that can be pretty much free. I never realized how many things from which you can make stock. The list is pretty much endless, but for about the last year I’ve been compiling a list of vegetable scraps you can throw in a pot of water and boil down for stock.

I keep a ziploc bag of the below scraps in my freezer at all times. When the bag is full, its time to make stock. Or if I have some bones left over, I throw the vegetable scraps in with them.

In the list below you’ll see a lot of things that you’d imagine would take over and make a really strong, specific stock, but this is not true. For the most part (the exception being asparagus ends, you’ll want to keep those to about 5 or 10 in a single pot) the vegetables marry their flavors together into a widely usable stock.

And the list:

potato peels

carrot peels

corn cobs

leek stalks

asparagus ends

tomato peels and juice

parsnip peels

squash middles (the stringy matter you pull the seeds from)

turnip peels

celery ends and leaves

cucumber and summer squash peels

Broccoli and califlower stems

Herb stems