It’s nice to have your own vegetable stock ready to use. This stock is made from the remainings of vegetables. You can freeze the stock in an ice cube tray. If you need the tray for someting else you can put the cubes, once frozen, into another container.
This way you can use your own stock cubes. The stock is not much work to make. It mostly takes some patience and memory. This stock recipe is suitable for the winter months. In the other seasons you can adjust the vegetables.
Extra supplies needed: an ice cube tray if you want to freeze your stock in cubes
For 1 ice cube form:
– vegetable peelings, parts of vegetables you don’t use etc. Suitable are carrot peels, pumpkin remainings and the upper parts of a leek. You can also use the lower parts of the vegetable which you cut off like with a celeriac. I used the remainings of leek, parsnip, white cabbage (also the outer leaves) and potato in this recipe but you can use many winter vegetables. Make sure they are still fresh (refrigerate them) and thus not spoiled: better not use the remainings from more then two days ago although it differs.
– 1 onion
– 1 clove of garlic
– 2 leaves of laurel
– herbs: you can see what you have in your cupboard or what fits well with your vegetables or planned recipe. For this recipe I used a teaspoon per unit of these dried herbs: rosemary, tarragon, thyme, oregano and parsley.
– salt and pepper
– water
For potatoes make sure you remove the shoots if they are there. It’s more easy to do this before peeling the potatoes. Wash all the vegetable remainings well. Cut the onion into large parts.
Put everything in a cooking pan with water until the ingredients are completely covered. This pan is 2,5L and was filled until the 2L mark. Bring to a boil and let it simmer on low heat. This takes 2-3 hours. After 1-2 hours strain the stock through a sieve so that all parts are out. Let the stock simmer again until it’s thick enough. This pan of stock took 2,5 hours of boiling to fit in the ice cube tray.
