Vegetable broth is an absolute must-have item in your vegan kitchen and essential in your cooking arsenal. Even if you’re not entirely vegan, vegetable broth is a great way to start cooking with more plant-based foods.

Veggie broth is a key ingredient to flavoring your cooking, whether it be a grain, a sauté, steamed veggies, or any other cooking process that involves water. Broth is essentially a flavored water that will add a layer of complexity to whatever you cook with it.

And don’t let others convince you that vegetable broth can’t be flavorful—it can be extremely flavorful when made well. The key to that is adding in a variety of flavors and layering them within the broth.

Here’s our easy and flavorful version that you can make with items that you’ll most likely already find in your fridge. The only ingredients that you might not have on hand are dried shiitakes and kombu seaweed, but both can be substituted or omitted entirely. The purpose of the shiitakes and kombu is to add a layer of umami flavor to the broth, but luckily the fresh cremini mushrooms and charred tomatoes already add some umami, so don’t worry too much if you don’t have them on hand.

Scroll down for the video and recipe ↓

   

Fresh veggies, spices, and umami

The way we incorporate several different layer of flavor here in this broth is by adding a mix of fresh vegetables, toasted spices, and umami flavors to it. All these different elements work together to create a well-rounded broth that hits your palette in a way that makes you say “wow, that’s tasty!”.

Toast your spices

The reason we toast our spices beforehand is because when dried spices, especially seeds, come in contact with intense heat, they release their aromas and become much more flavorful. This is extremely important to note when adding them to things like vegetable broth, since they’ll be cooking in a body of water and never coming into contact with direct heat. You want to make them as fragrant as possible before you add them so that they can release that aroma and flavor to the broth that they’ll be sitting in.

Have your veggie broth on hand

Vegetable broth is the kind of thing that you’ll be reaching for again and again in your cooking since it’s a flavor enhancer for so many cooking methods and recipes, so you want to make sure you always have it on hand. Keep it in a glass mason jar on the door of your fridge for easy access, or if you don’t go through that much of it, freeze half the batch so that you have some ready to go when you run out. Pro tip: freeze the broth in ice cube trays for handy flavor cubes you can use for every recipe!

the best thing about making broth is that it doesn’t need that much attention. Just throw everything in a pot and let it cook while you make a meal, do laundry, or have a zoom meeting.

Check out the recipe video here:

 

 

Vegetable Broth

Makes 3 quarts/ 3 liters

1 medium | 120g onions, diced small

5 cloves | 15g Garlic, minced

3 medium | 270g Carrots, chopped small

3 stalks | 130g Celery, diced small

8 whole | 60g Cremini mushrooms, chopped small

1 tsp | 2g freshly ground black pepper 

1 large pinch | 0.5g fennel seeds, toasted 

1 large pinch | 0.5g Caraway seeds, toasted 

1 bay leaf

1 4X4” piece Kombu seaweed 

4 whole | 5g Dried shiitake mushrooms, sliced

2 medium or 1 large | 350g tomatoes, charred 

3 qts | 3 liters Water 

1 large bunch | 6g fresh parsley stems

1. Add onions, garlic, carrots, celery, and cremini mushrooms to a large pot on medium-high heat. Sweat the vegetables for about 3 minutes in the dry pan.

2. Add pepper, fennel, caraway seeds, and bay leaf to the pan. Then add shiitakes, combo, and tomatoes. Crush the tomatoes roughly to incorporate them into the mix using a spoon or a potato masher.

3. Cook for 2 more minutes, then add water. Bring everything to boil and cook for 30 minutes on low flame. In the last 10 minutes, add parsley stems.

4. Remove from heat, strain, and set aside to cool. Store in the fridge for up to 5 days or in the freezer for up to 4 months.

   

Did you make this recipe? tag us on Instagram @eatogether.co so that we can see it!

 

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