Vegetable Broth

I've been wanting to try making my own vegetable broth to use in soups for a long time. Making homemade soup is my specialty. I make my own chicken broth all the time. I love to cook turkeys just so I can make turkey broth. I've never tackled veggie broth though (and since Mr. Incredible doesn't eat red meat, it is the perfect substitute for beef broth in any recipe).

Yesterday I took out my stock pot and filled it to the top with 16 cups of water, some broccoli stems, cauliflower stems, red leaf lettuce that was on the verge of too old, green beans that had been in my freezer too long, a cut up green apple, a cut up onion, some cut carrot and the inside stalks of celery (with leaves) that we wouldn't have eaten. I also tossed in some dried parsley, thyme and rosemary.

It looked like this when I put it on the stove:



It came to a boil and I reduced the heat and let it cook for several hours. I had to keep shoeing Mr. Incredible away because he wanted to pour himself a bowl and eat it. (From now on, I'll just feed him scraps!) After a few hours I removed the inside strainer with all the veggies. The mushy veggies looked like this (I set the strainer inside a large bowl to drip into until they cooled enough to compost):



Mr. Incredible snagged a cooked carrot and said it was terrific. The broth was a really nice dark golden color:



After it cooled down I poured the veggie broth into containers to freeze. I did strain out some extra herbs that were at the bottom. I got between 10 and 11 cups of broth. That should be 3 pots of soup. And the cost was practically nothing since most of the veggies I used were likely to be composted rather than eaten!