14 August, 2020
Veggie Broth from scraps
Veggie Broth is so easy to make and when you make it yourself you always know what’s in it! Here I’m going to show you how I make a tasty veggie broth from scraps. This particular broth is not vegan because I added a parmesan cheese rind. But obviously, if you’re vegan you probably don’t have any parmesan cheese rinds anyway so leave it out.
So what I do is I save all my scraps for a week or so, until I have enough to just about fill the pot. (I should add the pot I’m using here is an 8qt stock pot.) There’s a few different ways to do this, you can keep a large Ziploc bag in the freezer and throw all the scraps in there as you accumulate them. Or if you eat a lot of veggies like I do you can keep it in the fridge. Just be sure to look everything over before you start making the broth, moldy scraps don’t make good broth!
So in this pot I have scraps from about a week. There’s onion peels, broccoli stems, pepper tops and seeds, a tomato that fell on the floor and had a big bruise on it, eggplant peels, zucchini ends, mushroom stems, and a few smashed garlic cloves. Oh and that parmesan cheese rind. If not made into broth it would have been tossed in the trash (or maybe composted).
Add just enough water to cover the vegetables. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer for about an hour and a half.
I always add salt at the end. Or you can leave it out all together if you’re watching your sodium intake. Start small, easier to add more salt almost impossible to remove it.
Let it cool a bit, just so you don’t get burned. Pour it through a fine mesh strainer and into your container of choice.
I use this broth in place of water when making Rice and Quinoa. Or it’s a great base for soups!