The weather is finally cooling off here making that transition through fall toward winter. It’s the time of year where I start to crave homemade soups and stews for dinner.
Cooking isn’t my favorite activity so when I’m going to the effort of making something from scratch, I like to make a big batch to freeze some for easy future meals. Soups, stews, and chili are easy to do that with but often require a lot of broth. Since incorporating more grains like quinoa, bulgur, and amaranth into our diet, we’ve begun cooking them in broth as well to give our dishes more flavor.
Last year I began making my own vegetable broth in an effort to cut down on cost and consume fewer preservatives. The way I’ve learned to make homemade vegetable broth uses vegetable scraps so it even cuts down on kitchen waste. It is so easy to make, I wish I had begun years ago.
Homemade Vegetable Broth
To make homemade vegetable broth from kitchen scraps, you first have to begin saving your vegetable tops, peels, and skins. We try to purchase organic produce whenever possible so the outer parts of these vegetables are pretty safe of pesticides and other chemicals. If you don’t use organic, you may not want to use the peels and skins in this recipe.
The tip to keeping your veggie scraps from going bad is freezing them. We have a gallon freezer bag that I add scraps to every time one of us cooks. Within a few weeks to a month we have plenty of food scraps to make broth from.
Our scraps usually consist of garlic and onion skins, potato pieces, tops of carrots, bell pepper and zucchini, and celery stalks. Occasionally we have spinach or kale that is slightly wilted that I’ll stick in there. If you have fresh herbs you don’t get through fast enough, they’re a great addition.
What You Will Need:
- large stock pot
- gallon bag of frozen vegetable scraps
- 2.5 tsp salt
- 1.5 tsp black pepper
- any other herbs or spices desired
- 12 cups of water
- medium mesh strainer
- 3 quart or 6 pint sized containers depending on your needs
Begin by dumping out your frozen vegetable scraps into the stock pot.
Add the salt, pepper, and any other herbs or spices you’d like. I often have fresh parsley on hand. I have added ginger and lemongrass before too.
Pour the water over the frozen vegetable scraps. It should just about cover them depending on your variety of scraps.
Start cooking on high heat until the water is boiling. Then turn down the heat but make sure the stock is still shimmering. Cover it and cook for at least 1 hour, stirring occasionally.
Let the stock cool down before putting it in the containers. Once it has cooled down, pour the liquid through a strainer into your containers to keep the cooked scraps out of the final broth.
Discard or compost the cooked scraps.
After your containers have cooled down further, you can put them in the freezer or refrigerator depending on your meal plan for the week.
I usually freeze at least one quart size container to use in the future for soups or chili. I put the rest in pint size jars so I can defrost one at a time to use in my weekly recipes.
If storing in the fridge, use the broth within a week. For best quality use the frozen broth within 4 to 6 months.
More From Scratch Recipes for Fall:
- Pumpkin is one of my favorite fall flavors. This year I’ve been enjoying this homemade pumpkin spice coffee creamer.
- Ginger, honey, and apple cider vinegar can be combined to make a simple tea or tonic for staying healthy.
- This is a simple version of our favorite vegetarian chili recipe from the Minimalist Baker cookbook. It’s on regular rotation for dinner in our house during the fall and winter.
Do you cook with kitchen scraps? What are some of your favorite soup recipes?
