For years, making vegetable stock sounded like a good idea, but it wasn’t something I would actually do. It seemed difficult, like something I would need to buy a new pot for. But now I make it on a weekly basis, and I can attest, it is incredibly easy. And it’s a great way to:
- Waste less food
- Increase flavor in soups, stews, and dishes
- Add more vitamins and minerals to your diet.
How to make vegetable stock:
Designate a container in your refrigerator or freezer for vegetable scraps. This is where you’ll put all of your onion and garlic skins, carrot tops, celery greens, outside cabbage leaves, etc.
You can use any kind of large pot for making stock. I love my cast iron dutch oven.
To make the stock:
- Chop an onion and saute it in olive oil until soft.
Add
- the onion skin
- a carrot (chopped)
- 2 celery sticks (chopped)
- any other vegetable you have on hand, i.e. leeks, mushrooms, tomatoes, etc.
- a tablespoon of culinary herbs. I use marjoram and thyme.
- a teaspoon of salt.
- the contents of your vegetable scrap container.
- a couple of garlic cloves (optional)
- a piece of kombu (Kombu is a savory, mineral-rich seaweed. You can learn more about it here.) (optional)
Cover the vegetables with water. (I usually make about 8 cups at a time.) Simmer for at least half an hour. Taste the broth. If it’s not flavorful enough, simmer it longer. When it’s done, strain it, let it cool, and pour it into jars. (If you’re going to freeze it, leave some space at the top of the jars.)
Stock is not just for soup
You can use stock to puree baby foods or cook rice. Or you can just pour it in a mug and sip it. It’s the perfect nourishing drink for a cold day or to build strength when you’re ill.
I’ve been contemplating doing this too. I had NO idea you could use the onion and garlic skins. This is so exciting to me! Now you’ve convinced me. I’ll start my freezer container today.
Oh good, so glad I inspired you! It really is so easy and satisfying.
When you say ‘onion skins’ you don’t mean the papery exterior do you? Or just the first, outer layer of the onion? Instead of Kombu I wonder if I could use miso – since I already have it? Except that I think miso shouldn’t be boiled… I’d like to make my own stock instead of the veggie bouillon cubes I tend to use. After making and straining your stock do you then compost the remains?
Hi Kika, Yes I really do mean the papery exterior. You don’t have to add it. It may have become a tradition to do so because onion skins are a natural dye and thus make the stock a richer color. You can read a discussion about that here: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/613619.
You can definitely add miso to your stock for more nutrition whether you use kombu or not. (I’ve found that kombu is a great thing to have around though. You can also add it to beans while they’re cooking to make them more digestible.) As you mention, you don’t want to boil miso. So when I add it, I do so after I strain and cool the stock. A trick is to mix a tablespoon or two of miso into a 1/2 cup of warm water and pour that in, then you won’t end up with a clump of miso. And if you add miso, you probably don’t need to add salt, since miso is so salty.
I usually feed the remains to our chickens, and what they don’t eat goes to the compost pile. We try to get all the nutrition we can out of those vegetables. 🙂
Ok., so I made my first stock – kind’a fun! Normally I don’t wash onions and garlic before cutting so I wondered when boiling this stock if that was gross – using unwashed veggie parts?! It felt great to use up these scraps that normally would be discarded.