Homemade Vegetable Broth Recipe
A simple recipe to make flavorful vegetable broth at home. It's easy to make, cheaper and healthier than the canned broth you buy from the store.
Ingredients
- 2 count Onions (medium size, chopped)
- 3 count Carrots (medium size, coarsely chopped)
- 4 count Celery stalks (with the leaves, chopped)
- 2 count Leeks (coarsely chopped)
- 1 cup Cauliflower stalks
- 1 cup Broccoli stalks
- 1 cup Mushrooms (roughly chopped)
- 2-3 cloves Garlic
- 1 tablespoon Peppercorns
- 1 tablespoons Cilantro (for flavoring as needed)
- As needed Water (for consistency)
Instructions
- Thoroughly clean the vegetables, chop them roughly and put it in a big stock pot or a wide vessel to hold the vegetables as well as water. To remove the skin or not is your choice. But make sure to scrub the dirt off if you are not peeling.
- Cover the vegetables with enough water; set the pot on medium-high heat and bring it to a boil. Once it starts to bubble, turn down the heat a little bit.
- Cook for about an hour or so. I cooked mine for 2 hours. Again there is no standard time for this, but a minimum of 1 hour is needed for all the flavors to blend in. Since I used a lot of vegetables I extended the cook time by another hour.
- Remove the vegetables using a slotten spoon and filter the broth using a cheesecloth or a fine-mesh sieve or colander. This broth keeps good for about 3 days in the refrigerator and for about 2 months in a freezer or that's what I'm reading everywhere. I haven't tested to see what happens to the frozen broth after 2 months.
- Cook for about an hour or so. I cooked mine for 2 hours. Again there is no standard time for this, but a minimum of 1 hour is needed for all the flavors to blend in. Since I used a lot of vegetables I extended the cook time by another hour.
Notes
- If using leeks, make sure to remove each green stalk separately and thoroughly wipe off the dirt on the insides.
- Many Internet sources for homemade vegetable broth recipe suggests to throw in the leftover vegetables you have at the end of the week to prepare the broth. But I suggest the opposite. Start with fresh veggies for a flavorful stock. What I do is, I do the grocery shopping for the week on Saturdays. Once I come home I clean up the veggies like cutting the broccoli and cauliflower into bite size florets and retain the tough stalks for the broth. I cut them into small pieces and store it in a zip lock bag. Same goes for cilantro too. Sometimes the cilantro we get in Indian stores can hoard a lot of sand. So I trim off the root ends and discard the very ripe yellowish leaves. Then I separate the leaves from the stalks and use the stalks for the broth after cleaning it well. So I have all the ingredients ready by Saturday evening and start the process for the broth on Sunday morning. The other advantage of doing this on the weekends is cheap electricity rates, because where I live we have a scale of different rates according to the time of the day. Weekends, statutory holidays and late nights gets the lowest rate. So I tend to do a lot of baking and a lengthy cooking process like preparing broth on weekends.
- If you start with organic vegetables or locally grown fresh vegetables, the flavor is going to be even better. I tried it once with fresh veggies from the local farmers' market and the the flavor was amazing.
- I came across a wonderful idea to freeze the broth in muffin tins. Lightly grease each muffin tin with non stick cooking spray and then fill it with the broth and put it in the freezer. After about three hours, remove the tin from the freezer, turn it upside down and run it under warm tap water and the frozen broth will loosen and you will be able to take it out. Store it in a freezer bag in the freezer for about 3 months.
