Homemade Vegetable Stock
March 24th, 2009 by BethI usually don’t use vegetable stock. Chicken broth is an excellent substitute, and it usually costs much less. For some reason, our grocery stores don’t carry generic or reduced-sodium vegetable stock. Now that it’s Lent, I have needed vegetable stock for several recipes. It seemed foolish to pay $1 or more for vegetable-flavored water, when I could just make it myself. Really, how hard could it be?
I did a little searching online and found that it’s just as easy as I thought it would be. Over the course of about two weeks, I stashed bits of vegetables in a zip-top bag in my freezer. Once it looked like I had enough vegetable scraps, I followed the instructions on this website. Most vegetables can be used in stock, but cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus and tomato can be overwhelming.
Among other things, I accumulated bits of onion and zucchini, scraps and ribs of peppers and green leek tops. For good measure, I added a little bit of frozen corn, 2 bay leaves, whole peppercorn, a chopped up garlic clove and a several shakes of dried spices. Some cilantro was starting to look wilted, so I threw a small amount of that in too.
While the site listed above recommends a 1:1 ratio of solids to liquid, I found other sites that went with a 2:1 solid to liquid ratio. Wanting to get more bang for my buck, I tried the latter. The vegetable scraps filled about 6 cups, so I added 12 cups of water. After simmering for nearly and hour and straining out the solids, I was left with 8 cups of dark, flavorful vegetable stock. Not only did I save a few dollars, but I think my homemade stock tastes better than the store-bought variety and is sodium-free.
Tags: Vegetable Stock
March 24th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
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