Home made vegetable stock

(makes 2 litres)

We have been busy making a lot of soup lately, and after buying so much Cambpell's vegetable stock, I saw on a vegetarian/vegan blog one day that you could just make your own. Seems pretty obvious now that I think about it, but somehow has never occurred to me. Or if it had, it always seemed like way too much trouble. At the same time, I also read about making use of vegetable scraps rather than wasting them e.g. carrot peel, stalks from parsley/silverbeet/celery/greens by freezing them and then using them in vegetable stock. So I gave all this new information a try and it was not too bad. I have to say not all food scraps work, e.g. the tops and tails of beans/carrots/radish etc were too earthy and made the stock bitter so I didn't like that but others were ok. Anyhow, I'm just keeping this on my blog so I remember. 

This home-made vegetable stock is good replacement for the store-bought, not to salty or too strong but has flavour enough. The plan is to make a batch when I have time and a few of the right ingredients then freeze it, however I still keep a couple of packs of store-bought stock too as you can't really beat the convenience for those last minute dinners.

Prep time: 20 min
Cooking time: 2-3 hours

Ingredients
1 brown onion
4 cloves garlic
2 carrots
3 stalks celery
1 cup of chopped greens (or leftover food scraps)
3.5 litres water
1 sprig fresh rosemary
4 sprigs fresh parsley
1 tsp dried thyme (or 4 sprigs fresh thyme)
2 bay leaves
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black peppercorns

Method
1. Roughly chop the onion, garlic, carrots and celery.

2. In a large pot, place half a tablespoon of oil and brown the vegetables then add in the water and the herbs (rosemary, parsley, thyme, bay leaves), salt and pepper.

3. Bring to the boil then simmer for a couple of hours. Strain out all the vegetables and herbs.

4. Cool the stock and store away, either in the fridge for a few days or into the freezer. I found freezing them in 500mL or 1L batches the most useful.