Making vegetable broth at home is a great way to save money and add flavor and nutrients to various dishes like soups, rice, quinoa or sauces. Store-bought broths often have unhealthy additives, so it’s best to make it at home.
I always save inedible organic vegetable scraps like tough broccoli stalks, the ends of carrots, the stems of kale and the tough ends of asparagus and store it in a bag or container in the freezer. Once the bag is almost full of vegetable scraps, I use them to make vegetable broth. You can use any vegetable scraps that you want. I always add fresh chopped onion, garlic cloves, herbs like sage and oregano and salt and pepper.
Vegetable broth recipe:
Use any leftover vegetables, or vegetable scraps you have. You can use just about any vegetables you want for broth. Like I said, I always save inedible organic vegetable scraps like tough broccoli stalks, the ends of carrots, the stems of kale and the tough ends of asparagus and store it in a bag or container in the freezer. Then, when it’s full I’ll put them all together in a pot to make broth.
1. Put vegetable scraps, onion, garlic and herbs of your choice (sage, marjoram, oregano, etc.) in a large stock pot. Add enough water to completely cover the vegetables.
2. Bring to a rolling boil, then turn heat down to low so that the water is gently simmering. Add salt and pepper. Let simmer for at least an hour. The longer you simmer, the more the flavors will come out.
3. After about 1-2 hours, turn off heat. Let cool.
4. Store in jars in the fridge or freezer for later use.
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Just came across this idea… Wonderful!
Hi! Thanks for this and all your other great recipes! This is probably a dumb question but, at the end, you strain the veggie pieces from the broth, right?
tHanks!
Yes Andrea, make sure you strain the veggies. You won’t want to eat these veggie bits because they are very tough and hard to eat 🙂
Thanks so much for this. I’ve been freezing my scraps because I had heard you could do this, but I hadn’t found a “recipe” for it yet. This really helped! =)
I love to make mine in the crock pot 🙂
Hi! I would love to link to this post in my lentil soup post:) Let me know if that is ok with you.
Linda Spiker
The Organic Kitchen
Sure, as long as you provide a link back to my site that’s totally fine!
This might be a dumb question but is there any other way to link to this post without linking to your site? Since you stipulated I thought there might be something people do that I don’t know about! I am posting a lentil soup tomorrow that calls for veggie broth. I will link to this post. thanks!
I save the water from all veggies I cook and put them in a container and freeze them, to use for soup. Can’t stand the thoughts of throwing all those nutrients down the drain.
I take it one further as I have limited freezer space. After I strain the liquid through cheesecloth, I boil it again, ladle into hot sterilized quart jars and then pressure can. This seals it so I can store it in my pantry.
I have found that just about anything you can find in a can/jar at a big box store or grocer, you can put in a jar for yourself.
Happy Canning!!!
Marilyn in MS