Veggie Broth

Believe it or not, when thinking about my dietary restrictions, broth is the biggest pain in my behind. To get to the grocery store, I have to walk up a steep hill and then back down. That’s not too bad in the summer. The part that’s difficult is the walk back, while I’m carrying all my groceries. With the amount of broth I use in my cooking, I’d have to give up other groceries to manage to carry it all home. For a long time, I enjoyed using bouillon cubes because they weigh virtually nothing. I’d settled for gluten free cubes that contained minimal amounts of maltodextrin, but even that has been bothering my stomach lately.

The beauty of broth is that it can be made from frozen veggie scraps. However, when you go through broth faster than fresh veggies, it becomes necessary to find a recipe using whole veggies. You can modify the recipe I’m providing as you wish. Just make sure to include carrots, celery, and onions. You can add bell peppers, zucchini, parsley, or anything that comes to mind, as long as you avoid the broccoli and cabbage family.

I’ve mentioned before how much I dislike the texture of celery. For that reason, when I buy celery, I use it in recipes that call for completely watering it down, and I freeze the rest. I wrote a post about chopping extra veggies for future slowcooker meals. When I’m too lazy to do that, I freeze celery stalks so that I can use them in broth at a future occasion.

Veggie Broth

Ingredients
2 large carrots
2 stalks celery
1 large onion
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp rosemary
2 bay leaves
7 1/2 cups water
Salt to taste

Directions
Cut the large veggies in half. Put all the ingredients in a large soup pot and bring to a boil. Cook on medium-low heat for an hour. Strain the broth and use within a week, or within a few months if you freeze it.

I like to freeze part of it in a large mason jar, and the rest in an ice cube tray for those recipes that call for small amounts of veggie broth (or as a substitute for oil when frying veggies and/or grains).