If you don’t have a muffin tin, go right out to your local yard sale or thrift store now and pick one up. Or, better yet, pick up several. You’ll be sure to find quite a few of the muffin tins available of pennies.
There are so many ways that muffin tins can save you money. Here is one of my favorites.
Make some broth muffins! Whenever I cook a chicken, I try to get as many meals out of it as possible (see this article about stretching a chicken, to learn more). But one of the issues I would always have is what to do with the broth. I would freeze it into large containers and then use it for soup. Usually there was some waste that would have to get tossed away.
The irony is that even with all of that stock in the freezer, I was still using chicken bouillon or using canned chicken stock. But a much better idea is to freeze my own broth in 1/2 cup portions. Then when I need to add some chicken stock to a recipe, I have it handy. Muffin tins are perfect of this. Just pour in the stock, freeze it and then pop out the broth muffins. You can place them in a freezer bag or container for easy use.
The silicon molds work especially well for freezing broth, since it is easy to pop out the little broth muffins, but I have done this with metal muffin tins, too. Just score around the edge of the cups with a butter knife and the broth will release easily. Or you could sit the bottom of the tin in a little bit of hot water for a few seconds to help loosen the broth muffins, if they stick.
Mary Ann Romans also writes for the Computing Blog here at Families.com where she shares everything from the latest news on technology to cool downloads and fun websites.
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