Homemade vegetable broth

Vietnamese version (bản tiếng Việt): click here!

Since I’m gonna upload some soup recipes that included making the broth, I think it would be best to put the stock in a separate post then use it as a reference. And this probably has the shortest ingredient list for the Cooking category.

You may ask, why vegetable broth but not… meat broth or stock? First of all, vegetable broth can be applied to a wide variety of dishes, unlike beef stock/broth or chicken stock/broth that can only work for some recipes. Secondly, it is less time-consuming to make the vegetable broth rather than stocks and broths from pork bones and beef bones. Thirdly, the ingredients are more readily available and inexpensive, comparing to pork bones and beef bones are more costly and might not available in grocery stores.
The whole point is the stock or broth has to work well in a dish. Even though I wrote about the chicken broth before (in the recipe of Vietnamese chicken vermicelli) and it was also easy to make, not so time-consuming but it did not work well with those soups that I wanted to make, so I chose the vegetable broth instead.

Ingredients:
This is the basis of my broth. You can use whatever you like. A note here is that the amount of veggie wastes I got was just enough to yield 2 pints of broth from 1 L of water. And 1 star anise for every liter of water is already good enough.

• Vegetable wastes: carrot peels, shallot peels, garlic peels, broccoli stems, spring onion heads and roots…
• Water: enough to immerse the veggie
• Star anise, some black peppercorns and coriander seeds (for a more flavorful broth)

Preparation:

• Add all the solid ingredients above to a large pot and add water to fully immerse the veggies. Cover the pot with lid and bring to boil on medium-high heat for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to simmer for 20-30 minutes. (You would definitely feel the beautiful aroma from the broth by that time.)
• Turn off the heat and let it cool down before you remove the veggie wastes and store the broth. You would expect the final broth to have a clear and nice, golden color.

If you want your broth to have a natural umami flavor, use dried shiitake mushrooms. With just 2 mushrooms for every liter of water, your stock would have a rich umami taste. Avoid the red cabbage stem unless you want your broth to have an interesting reddish color (the left photo below) instead of the nice clear golden color (photo on the right).

And that’s simply it! Hope you enjoy this short one!