Veggie Broth

In my omnivore days, it was very important to me that I always have homemade chicken broth in my freezer.  I would spend a great deal of time making the chicken broth, and I jokingly called it my "liquid gold". 

When I started a plant based diet, I was really disappointed in the flavor of store bought vegetable broth.  For some recipes, it was okay, but if the recipe had a delicate flavor which highlighted the broth, I felt like the store bought broth was very lacking in flavor. 

My son made a visit to our home, and at that time he was cooking at a very fancy shmancy restaurant in Montana.  He told me that the restaurant saved their veggie scraps in the freezer and then made huge vats of veggie broth with the scraps.  He encouraged me to start saving my veggie scraps.

I thought it would take me a long time to save enough veggie scraps to make a pot of broth.  I was so wrong.  I generate about two gallons of veggie scraps per week.

This weekend I made my first batch of broth.  I used 2 1/2 gallons of veggie scraps from the freezer.  I was afraid there may be too many carrot scraps, which might make the broth sweeter than I wanted.  For that reason, I added two fresh onions and three fresh ribs of celery.   After tasting the broth, I think I could have added only one fresh onion and a couple of ribs of celery, and that would have balanced out the sweetness.  I am very pleased with the outcome. 


Here is a list of the veggies which were in my freezer scraps-  carrots, lettuce, celery, red bell pepper, yellow onion, green onion, garlic, asparagus, tomato (small amount), green beans, white potatoes, parsley. 

I had been warned not to use cabbage, as it can overtake the flavor of the broth.  I also would never use much tomato, as I don't want it to turn into a tomato sauce.  I just put five cherry tomatoes in my broth. 

I think I came out with about 5-6 quarts of broth.  I packaged it in containers ranging from 2 quarts to 1/2 cup, to accommodate the variety of uses for the broth.   After the broth has been made, the cooked veggie scraps can be added to the compost.  I think they will break down quickly.  I love the fact that "trash" can be used to take the place of expensive broth and then used for compost, which is also expensive to purchase.  The best part of this experiment for me was the fact that veggie broth takes about one fourth of the time that chicken broth did. 

I still have three gallons of scraps in the freezer, plus what I will have leftover from cooking this week.  I guess I will be making more broth next weekend.