Frozen Veggie Scraps
Every time I make vegetable stock, I wonder why I ever bother buying it in the store. It’s so easy! Chop up some vegetables, cover with water, and simmer. Done. You’ll have enough stock to make whatever your little heart desires…and this veggie stock is much healthier. You will see a lot of recipes out there that have you cut up perfectly good veggies to boil to make the stock. I prefer to save my veggie scraps from everything that I make throughout the month in a container in the freezer and then use those veggie scraps to make my stock. I usually do this about once a month, and store the completed stock in the freezer in tupperware containers until I need it (check out my container of frozen veggie scraps in the photo above).
Ingredients
- Approx 4 cups of frozen veggies
- Enough purified water to pour over the veggies
Directions
1. Pull your full container of frozen veggie scraps from the freezer
2. Fill the frozen veggie container with purified water. This will help to thaw out some of the veggies; dump the whole container with water into a large soup pot.
3. Fill the rest of the pot with purified water until your veggie scraps are covered.
4. If you are feeling sassy, go out to your garden and pick some fresh herbs (rosemary, basil, or thyme…or all three, and add them to your pot). This will add a nice flavor to your stock.
5. Cover you soup pot with a lid and bring to a boil.
6. Once the stock is boiling, loosen the lid and reduce the heat so that your stock is simmering.
7. Simmer for 45 mins
8. After 45 mins, remove your stock from the heat and let it hang out with itself for about 20 mins. This will allow the broth to cool a bit and give the veggie scraps a little extra time to get to know each other.
9. To strain the broth, get a large mixing bowl and a strainer and set the strainer inside of the mixing bowl. Dump your broth and veggie mixture into the strainer (see photo below).
Veggie Broth in a Strainer
10. Lift the strainer full of veggie scraps from the bowl and strain until all of the liquid is out.
11. Transfer this liquid gold into tupperware containers and freeze until you need them (see photo below).
Completed veggie stock
12. Discard the boiled veggies or if you are lucky put them in your compost container.
Voila! You have made your first batch of veggie stock.
*Note: Don’t be shocked at the amount of salt some of you might add to your dishes when using this stock. The store bought stock already comes loaded with sodium. This broth is sodium free at the moment. I like to make my soups and curries with this sodium-free stock and then add salt to my dish as I prepare it. This way I have control over the amount of salt that goes into my dishes. Enjoy!
Kathleen Ford
I never thought of making my own broth and to think of all the veggie scraps that I throw out. I will definitely try it. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Dani
Keep me posted. It will be a lot less salty than you are use too, but it works great in soups and as a base for cooking rice 🙂