Making Vegetable Stock

Reduce waste, save money, optimize nutrition - make your own stock!

In my household, one-pot meals are quick and easy for us, hence, we go through a lot of soup stock. Recently, I've been concerned with the ingredients that go into soup bases: monosodium glutamate (MSG), artificial flavours, palm oil, corn maltodextrin, etc., not to mention the sodium - yikes - as high as 40% DV (keep in mind 15% is a lot) per 1/2 cube!

Sean and I have both made the effort to save our vegetable scraps, the leftover stuff we tend to throw out when cooking with whole vegetables: cauliflower, broccoli, celery and carrot ends, onion and carrot peels, wilted kale or spinach, shrivelled mushrooms, etc. We have a large bag in our freezer and add to it every time we're chopping veggies.

Today we made our own vegetable stock and it's so simple:

1) Add your frozen veggie scraps to a large pot

2) Fill with water

3) Add a few bay leaves and a tablespoon of dried thyme

4) A few shakes of salt and pepper (I prefer the flavour of sea salt)

5) Boil, then reduce to a simmer for a few hours

6) Strain. Divide it into smaller containers or ice cube trays and freeze

Use your vegetable stock as part of your base for soup, stew, chilli, for braising meat or for cooking rice, quinoa, wheat etc. The best part is there are no unnatural ingredients. And even though salt is added for flavour, the sodium content is no where near that found in a store-bought broth or bouillon.

Reduce, save, optimize.