Vegetable Broth

I love making soup. I actually used to hate it until this year, and now I'm hooked. It's like a drug...but a really, really delicious and healthy one. I guess.

The base of every soup is a good vegetable broth. Well, every western-style soup, at any rate. I make a lot of Japanese-style soups with a broth called "dashi" made out of kombu seaweed and shiitake mushrooms, which is even easier to make than this, which therefore makes Dashi the EASIEST recipe I know... but I digress...

A good vegetable broth is the heart of a good soup! It's better to make your own fresh broth than to use pre-made or cubes. However, I use vegan stock cubes more often than I care to admit. They're not bad or anything...just neither as nutritious nor as satisfying as making your own.

This here is my most basic veggie broth recipe. It's basically the bare minimum that you'll need to make a tasty broth. Feel free to omit the salt, add other things, and generally mess with this recipe as much as you see fit.

VEGETABLE BROTH
(makes about 7-8 cups)

1 tbsp olive oil
1 med-large onion
3 cloves garlic
2 carrots
2-3 celery sticks
9 cups water
*pinch of salt


DIRECTIONS

Chop veggies coarsely.

Heat oil in LARGE stock pot on medium. Sautee garlic & onion until fragrant. Add carrots & celery. Heat through. At this time, if you want to add herbs, spices, or salt, do it now.

Add all 9 cups of water at once. Mix well. Heat until it starts to boil. Simmer on med-low with the lid mostly on (leaving a small space for vapors to escape) for about 1 - 1 1/2 hours.

Filter out the veggies through a strainer, and toss them away (they taste disgusting at this point). Save the broth in a glass container, or use it right away in a soup!


Notes: Vegetable broth is an extremely open-ended recipe. You can add root vegetables as you desire - parsnips, potatoes, turnips, rutabaga... whatever you want. The more things you add, the richer it will become. Add herbs, fresh or dry (such as parsley, rosemary, thyme, sage, oregano, etc) to add a "provincial" flavor. You really can't go wrong. And if you don't plan to use it within about 5 days or so, then freeze it.