Vegetable Stock

A good vegetable stock is useful in a huge variety of dishes. You can buy a good commercial brand or make your own. Here is an easy recipe:

To make 4 cups of vegetable stock use

2 large onions

2 medium carrots

3 stalks of celery

1 whole bulb of garlic

10 peppercorns,

2 or 3 bay leaf.

Vegetables must be chopped into large chunks rather than diced. Cut a peeled and halved onion into large chunks. Break up the whole garlic bulb and peel cloves without chopping or crushing (use at least 6 6 cloves s this is the basic flavor).  Just peel the garlic and use it all. You can also add herbs or scraps leftover from other dishes. Potato scraps are good to add as the starch will help thicken the stock a little. Other common additions are stems from parsley, thyme, or rosemary. If you are planning on using this stock in an Asian recipe, adding fresh, peeled ginger is appropriate.

After preparing the vegetables and adding appropriate leftover scraps, place in large saucepan, cover generously with water, bring to the boil and simmer on low heat for an hour. Do not allow the hard vegetables to disintegrate. they tend to turn mushy and loose their flavor. So don’t allow the vegetable mix to cook for much longer than an hour. Strain the stock – it is best to use a cheesecloth and a colander. 

The stock should be light in colour. When it is cool, you can store it in the fridge. Freezing stock in jars is a useful way to store it, provided you leave enough room in the jar for expansion and mark it with a date. Another way to go is to store as ice cubes. Put the frozen stock cubes in a freezer bag and mark the date on the bag. This way you can keep stock handy.