Easy Vegetable Broth Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Is it cheaper to make your own vegetable broth? ›

Homemade vegetable broth allows you to get more use out of your vegetables. It can save you money, and save you a trip to the grocery store. As a bonus, your homemade broth will taste delicious and you can control the amount of salt and other seasonings.

Add bright, fresh flavor to vegetable broth

Just warm up the broth, toss in some parsley, cilantro, tarragon, sage, thyme, or a combination, and let the broth steep like tea for several minutes before fishing the herbs out. Don't boil fresh herbs in broth, though, or they could make the stock bitter.

Some vegetables just don't taste great in a stock! Cruciferous vegetables will get funky tasting, and seemingly mild vegetables like zucchini, green beans, and bell peppers can get bitter if simmered for too long.

Vegetables to Avoid When Making Vegetables Stock

Starchy vegetables like potatoes and turnips will make for a gummy, cloudy vegetable stock. Beets overpower their aromatic counterparts. Zucchini and greens beans become bitter when slowly simmered for as long it takes to make this stock.

Vegetable broth contains iron that helps to stimulate the formation of red blood cells, helping to avoid anemia, increase energy levels, and avoid tiredness. Homemade broth helps to manage body metabolism, optimizing nutrient absorption, and resulting in a lighter feeling.

Homemade Vegetable Broth will keep in the fridge for up to one week, or for up to two months in the freezer. You can freeze the broth in ice cube molds, or store it in glass jars (just be sure to leave room for the liquid to expand, or the jar will break!)

But if you keep an eye on sodium levels, both broth and stock can be healthy. Taub-Dix notes that stock is often considered healthier than broth since it tends to be slightly higher in protein and other nutrients, including vitamins and minerals, than broth.

Carrots, onions, garlic, celery, peppers, mushrooms, and tomatoes are just some of the vegetables you can add to your bone broth to give it added flavor and nutritional value.

If it tastes bitter to you, there are a couple of ways to fix that. Consider adding one to four tablespoons of unsalted butter. Add one at a time, melt it in, cook for two minutes and taste.

Can you eat the vegetables after making vegetable broth? ›

Vegetables will not have much left to give after being used for stock, you can still eat them but they may not be flavorful or nutritious. Unless you're making a stew you're going to be cooking the stock, then removing the vegetables, then cooking the stock more with other ingredients.

Tips while cooking broth

Bone broth or meat-based stocks are often simmered for several hours, up to 24 hours or longer. However, it's not necessary to cook vegetable broth nearly as long! In fact, overcooking vegetable broth may make it bitter. Therefore, 45 minutes to an hour is plenty long.

Saving Vegetable Scraps for Stock

Vegetables that add sweetness include carrots, parsnips, golden beets, fennel, corn cobs, pea pods, and leftovers of previously roasted vegetables. Vegetables that contribute savory bass notes include onions, leek tops, mushroom stems, spinach, chard, squash peels.

Avoid bitter greens and members of the brassica family (kale, cabbage, Bok Choy). Other greens can be used in small quantities. Good in small quantities (no more than 1/5 of the stock ingredients). Foods in the Brassica family, such as kohlrabi, are too strong for stock/broth and can impart a bitter taste.

Consider adding other vegetables and herbs to the stock, like mushrooms, eggplant, asparagus trimmings, corn cobs, fennel stalks and trimmings, bell peppers, pea pods, chard stems and leaves, celery root trimmings, potato parings, marjoram stems and leaves, and basil stems and leaves.

Dark greens (spinach, kale, etc) can make a stock bitter and of course greenish in color. Cabbage also can impart a overwhelming bitterness. Potatoes can cloud a stock from their starchiness, so they are not good when you want clear stock for something like a soup or consomme.