When I was diagnosed with Kidney disease right as the pandemic was kicking in, I changed my diet and completely vegan to preserve what kidney function I had and to stave off dialysis. For 3 years, I stayed away from all meat-related products and main lived off of veggie fried rice, stir fries and any asian-related soups i could get or make. After surgery i’ve gone a little crazy and lost my healthy way was eating. I’ve decided to get back in shape and get back to eating healthy, so i want to start cataloging the recipes I use to make to keep myself healthy and see if I can get back to the way i was.
Today I’m going to tackle vegetable stock.. the foundation of my veggie meals (i’m not going completely vegan this time around. Maybe eat meat on the weekends). It’s a simple thing to do and good to keep stock in your freeze to use with whatever you would use water in..
NOTE: There are tons of ways to make stocks of all kind. I’ve tried about a dozen different ways, and this produces the best flavor for me.
Ingredients
- Onions
- Carrots
- Mushrooms
- Tomatoes (optional)
- Celery
- Peppers
- Leeks
- Lemon grass
- garlic
- Herbs of choice (parsley, thyme, bay leaves, etc.)
2. Roast vegetables
The first thing we want to do is roast some of the vegetables to get that smokey flavor. Pull out a flat baking pan and coat it a neutral oil (i use olive oil).
Loosely cut ‘some’ of your onions, carrots, leeks, peppers, mushrooms, lemon grass and garlic and place them into the pan. Do enough to cover a single layer of the pan. You put a little more on there but dont’ crowd the pan too much. Season vegetables with salt and pepper (you can add more seasoning if you like, but not much because we want the stock flavor to be clean). Drizzle a little more oil on top of the veggies and then carefully mix it all though.
Place pan in the oven and bake for 20-30 minutes. After afterwards, take the pan out and mix the veggies again. Next, place the pan back in to roast or another 20-30 minutes. Keep repeating this until your veggies are roasted a nice dark brown. It’s not going to look pretty but these veggies will have ALOT of flavor.
3. Assemble our stock
Get a big pot (the bigger the better). Add all of your unroasted veggies into the pot. Ontop of that, add your roasted veggies. If possible, scrape all the drippings and brown bits on the pan. That’s flavor you don’t want to waste.
Add water into the pot about 3/4 from the top. You want as much water as possible, but not enough to overflow once we start cooking.
Put your pan on the stovetop on high heat and bring to a boil. Once you get a good boil, turn the heat down to a medium simmer. You’ll want to keep this going for at least 2 hours to get as much flavor out of all the vegetables. Make sure you check on it and give it a gentle stir every 45 minutes or so.
When done, turn the pot off and move it to a cold burner and let sit to fully cool. Once cooled, use a strainer to filter out the veggies and just store the both. You can store in jars or plastic containers and place in your freezer. They keep for a long time and work well with a lot of food.
4. Option
Making stock this way give you a clean, subtle veggie taste. But if you want something a little more, put the strained broth back into a clean pot and let it cook longer and reduce it by 1/3. This will give you a nice concentrated base.