How to Make Homemade Vegetable Broth From Scraps

Homemade vegetable broth is perfect for winter. It’s so easy to make and can be used in a variety of ways.

Vegetable broth adds extra flavour to dishes and costs no extra money to make. That’s because you can use the scraps from the vegetables you eat throughout the past few weeks/months to make it.

Since you use scraps to make this broth, It’s actually good for the environment too. Some benefits of making your own vegetable broth:

• You have less waste because you no longer are purchasing the packaged containers
• You save money
• You get more use out of your vegetables
• It’s healthier because because there are no additives
• You can add whatever spices you would like
• You can make however much or little you’d like

Homemade vegetable broth is so easy to make. All you have to do is throw all the ingredients into a pot with water and let it simmer for hours. I’ll have it going while I do other chores around the house, take a shower or even relax.

Did you know?

Food wastage is one of the leading causes of global warming. When food cannot decompose in nature properly, it emits methane. Methane gets stuck in our atmosphere and is one of the reasons that our global temperature is rising.

What can you do about this?

• Eat all your food before they go bad
• Only take what you can eat
• Request smaller portion sizes are restaurants
• Take leftovers from restaurants home and actually eat them instead of letting them go bad
• Have a day when you don’t cook and only eat leftovers
• Compost, compost, compost!

What goes into homemade vegetable broth?

Not everything will taste good in vegetable broth. For example, broccoli is very overpowering and will be too strong of a flavour. Also, potato skins will make the broth look muddy. So what can go into broth?

• Mushroom
• Bell peppers
• Chives
• Celery
• Carrot
• Onion and it’s skin
• Garlic and it’s skin

Throughout the weeks, take your veggie scraps, rinse them and then store them in a container in the freezer. This way, the scraps won’t go bad before you use them.

If you find that some of your vegetables are going bad and you won’t have the chance to use them, toss them in the freezer as well. You can use them in your broth.

But if there’s mold on it or it’s gone bad, then toss it out. It will just make the broth taste bad.

Once the container is full, it’s ready to be used to make your homemade vegetable broth.

How to make the vegetable broth

1. Add your frozen veggies into a large pot.
2. Fill the pot up with water. I generally pour 8–12 cups depending on the amount of space in the pot
3. Depending on your preferences and and how much you’re making, add about 1 tbsp salt and 2 bay leaves. You can also add other herbs and spices as you like and adjust the flavour later.
4. Bring the water to a boil then let simmer for at least 2 hours. You can keep it going for as long as you’d like to make the flavour stronger.
5. Let the broth cool a bit then strain the liquid into another pot. Compost the veggie scraps and separate the broth into different glass jars for storage.

Storage

Bottle your broth in glass jars. You can use old glass jars from pasta bottles or drinks to store them in. Store leftover broth in the fridge for up to 4 days. Store the rest of the broth in the freezer.

Make sure for the ones you’re putting the the freezer, you leave about a quarter empty space at the top. The broth will expand when frozen and if the jar is completely full, the glass will break.

I hope you enjoyed this post. If you’re interested in learning more about eco-friendly tips to help the environment, check out my blog sustainably-yours.com

Originally published at https://sustainably-yours.com on October 19, 2020.