Monday, April 2, 2012

How to: Vegetable Broth

The freezer has been cluttered for months.  I have bags upon bags of vegetable scraps for broth, frozen fruit for my daily smoothies, and other random items that I have not seen in months.  Jamie was having difficulty finding space for her items.  She offered me a deal I could not refuse.  If I made vegetable broth, she would re-organize the freezer.  She did not have to ask twice.  I started the boiling water right then.

As she was going through the freezer, she kept finding more and more bags of nearly frost bitten vegetable scraps.  It got out of hand quickly, I ended up having over 10 bags of scraps.  I had 3 huge pots on the stove for hours, the entire place smelled like boiled onions.  In the end, I had nearly a gallon of home made vegetable broth.  Amazing...and right back into the freezer.





Vegetable Broth How To:

Vegetable broth is one of the easiest things to make on your own.  In fact, it save a tremendous amount of money as well.  Each time I make broth, it come out slightly differently.  Over the course of months I save all my salvageable vegetable scraps (onion skin, pepper ribs, broccoli stalks, any vegetable that I am not going to use before it goes bad, etc), I put them in seal-able baggies and into the freezer they go.  After I have enough, I fill a large pot with about 1/2 water, all the vegetables, and I generally add an additional onion and celery bunch.  Then I boil it for about 3 hours, adding liquid if needed.

Then once it has been boiled, strain and let the broth cool.  I like to store my broth in 1 and 2 cup sizes.  Pour into plastic ware and freeze.  Done.

6 comments:

Leslie Ann Costello said...

It looks great. And incredibly frugal (I like frugal). And now you have all those clean plastic bags to fill up with the next three months' worth of veggie peelings.

I do the same thing. The stuff for sale at the store is mostly sodium and food colouring.

xvavaveganx said...

That's such a great way to get use out of everything! 10 bags of scraps and a gallon of broth, wow! That is a great yield! Can't wait to see what you do with it!

Cadry said...

Good for you making use of every scrap and peeling! This is something I've meant to do for a long time, but I'm almost afraid to start. Our freezer already gets so packed with all of the frozen bananas for smoothies and beans I make from scratch and freeze, I don't know how much more room there will be for stock! Still, it's a great way to use every part of the vegetable, and I like it that it's so natural in comparison to a lot of boxed broths and bouillon cubes.

Jes said...

Your broth is so dang dark--I can't even imagine how flavorful it must be! Great alternative when one can't compost odds & ends too.

Millie said...

I'm laughing on this end because my freezer is always stuffed with frozen vegetables, fruits for my smoothies and sofrito for my Spanish cooking. I cleaned mine out on Friday but yesterday it was restocked again with fresh vegatables & fruit for the month.

PIE-314 said...

This is SUCH a great idea! Wow! I have to do this! Simply terrific!