Liquid Gold!!!!
Liquid Gold Veggie Stock
Prep time: 5 minutes | Total time: 2 hours
I cannot tell you how much you are cheating yourself, both in the kitchen and in your wallet, if you do not regularly make your own veggie stock. If this sounds harsh, I apologize, but once you make the switch you will understand my passion, and then (hopefully) thank me. Vegetable broth* - or, as Lisa and I call it, "liquid gold" - is the easiest, cheapest way to take almost any dish from good to great. It is entirely impossible to fuck up (notes on what not to add below), insanely easy to make, and VERY fun to hunch over your pot (see: cauldron) and practice your spells.
This is literally an ‘everything and the kitchen sink’ recipe that can be tweaked, changed, adjusted, and free styled to your heart's content. Basically you just need to follow a few Do's and Don'ts:
DO: Use any part of the onion, garlic skin, pepper innards, ginger scrap, corn cob, chard bits, or carrot peel!
DON'T: Add the leafy parts of celery or carrots, cabbage, broccoli, brussel sprouts, green beans, kale, beets or potatoes of any kind. These will all make the stock taste flat and cloudy.
DO: keep a large bag in your freezer that you may or may not affectionately refer to as your "broth bag" to let your frozen scraps accumulate** until you are ready to transform them into liquid gold. You will be AMAZED by how little you throw in your trash and will also experience that sweet sweet self righteous satisfaction that comes from doing something that makes sense for the environment, and gives more bang for said bucks.
DON'T: add vegetables that have gone bad.
DO: keep spice in mind! Sometimes I use a lot of jalapeños and this will yield a spicier broth, which could be a great addition or subtraction to a dish depending on what you're going for.
DON’T: ever use bouillon cubes again, ever! Better than Bouillon is my go to in a pinch.
The actual, physical, act of making broth couldn't be simpler:
Directions
Add scraps (frozen and fresh together is no prob) and cover with about 1 inch of water in a large pot (I have one that is 20 gallons because that is how serious I am about broth).
Bring to a boil and let simmer for 1.5 hours until mixture is bright, clear, and tasty.
Strain with a mesh sieve and discard all chunks. Use immediately or freeze and save for later! You can also salt at any point in the process but I usually keep mine neutral to add salt when I'm cooking.
* I use the terms stock and broth interchangeabley - some think one is referring to meat / bone water and the other veggie. I do not think this is an important distinction!
** Pro tip - if you are like me and buy more veggies than you can possibly use in time, freeze them! See a pepper that has seen better days but is still, a good pepper? Pop that bad boy in the freezer. Have some mushrooms that you no longer would put in a salad, but might cook? Freezer baby!
