Basic Veggie Stock Recipe

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This is the recipe I concocted while following Sommer Collier’s recipe over here. I followed what she had said but I wanted to include exactly what ingredients I threw together and how it came out! This isn’t my typical content, so please bear with me as I try and write a recipe!

So, as Sommer says in her article, you can make a veggie broth pretty much however you want, although almost all start with a Mirepoix base (roughly a 2:1:1 ratio of onions, carrots and celery). In her recipe, she specifically calls for at least 1 onion, 3 carrots and 3 celery stalks.

This is an “general purpose” stock, but obviously has extra ingredients compared to the baseline. Anything marked “(optional)” is something that you could omit for a more generic, basic stock, but this is my preferred stock.

Here’s the recipe!

Ingredients:

  • 1 entire celery base as shown below (or 3 entire celery stalks should do the trick as well).

    • Throw in some of the leafy bits as well, which are very bitter and add lots of flavor.

  • 1 large onion cut in half

    • Many don’t peel the onion and claim that it doesn’t ruin flavor, I prefer to peel the onion paper off to rid tiny paper particles and to expose more of the onion. Exposing more of the onion is also why I cut it in half

  • 1 whole garlic cut in half.

    • This is also peeled, however, it’s only slightly peeled, don’t go to the trouble of peeling every garlic, just get the outermost layer off. It should look like the image below.

  • 3 carrots

  • 4 quarts of water

  • 2 tbsp kosher salt

  • 2 tsp whole black peppercorns

  • 3 Baby Bella mushrooms (optional)

  • 1 Red Bell Pepper (halved) (optional)

  • A bundle (~10 sprigs) of parsley, stem and all. (optional)

  • 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)

  • 1 tsp rosemary (optional)

Recipe:

  1. Add ingredients to large pot and add water.

  2. Cover the pot with a lid, and bring the pot to a boil over high heat.

  3. Lower the heat, to a simmer, remove the lid and continue to simmer for 45 - 60 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and strain all solids from the pot.

  5. Transfer the vegetable broth to a container

  6. Wait for it to cool before moving to the refrigerator or freezer for storage.

Reference Pictures as noted above.

The circled region would be the celery base.