— Renee Munoz

We get this question quite regularly, Renee, and to the answer always is, is yeah, you can use them, but really by the time you've, you're done making the stock, you've actually, um, taken out most of the essential vitamins and, uh, nutrients out of those, and those vitamins and nutrients and flavor are now in the stock. So, uh, you can use them. In fact, I see a lot of students in very inventive waves of, you know, trying to reuse them from just blending them up in the soup, which is fine. Um, you know, the, you're gonna get the fiber out of those, which is totally as well too, totally okay to be able to do as well. But generally I'm going to take them out, um, because they've served their usefulness. I usually, um, compost them to be able to, uh, you know, turn them back into soil, basically is, uh, the, the thing that I usually do with the, uh, the vegetables in the stock afterwards. So, um, instead of throwing 'em out, try composting them a much better way, uh, to be able to use those. But if you want to be able to add a little bit of texture into things, you can absolutely add them into them. But remember, they've been cooked so long that they're gonna be really mushy, so you're not gonna get a lot of texture. The flavor has been pretty much taken out of them or blended with all the other things in there. So, um, I would recommend, you know, using them for compost. But again, feel free to be able to do whatever you'd like with them. I see a lot of students trying to think of inventive ways to be able to use them and their cooking. Um, either as filler into things you can put 'em into, you know, different dishes, like maybe a shepherd's pie or something like that if you'd like to. Um, but just remember that the flavor profiles changed a little bit from the way that they were originally put into it. Um, and there's not gonna be a lot of, uh, vitamins or nutrients left in them because you're putting them in the stock, which is the intention of doing that.