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Thank you to Hammer Stahl for providing us with complementary cookware to make our Vegetable Broth, and for review purposes.
Every home cook should know how to make a great homemade Vegetable Broth – and we’re sharing our recipe with you today!
Sure – you can easily buy canned vegetable broth or vegetable stock at the supermarket – but homemade vegetable broth tastes so much better, it doesn’t have any additives, and it’s much less expensive too.
Making a homemade vegetable broth is also quite easy – and you can make it with a variety of vegetables you already have in refrigerator and pantry. (*See the note below in our recipe about using different vegetables.)
We used carrots, celery, onions, kale (and even the leftover kale stems), leeks, tomatoes, garlic, parsley, thyme, and simple seasonings such as salt, peppercorns, and bay leaves. We also added a tablespoon of dulse – dried seaweed flakes that add a wonderful depth of flavor – but this is an optional ingredient.
You may also be surprised to see that we added some egg shells to our pot of vegetables. Adding the egg shells is an old culinary trick that helps clarify the broth.
You’ll simply add all of the ingredients (except the salt – that will be added later) to a large stock pot along with some cold water. (Hammer Stahl’s 12-quart pot was perfect for making broth – more on that below!) Then slowly bring the pot of vegetables to a simmer where it will cook for a few hours to extract the flavors of the vegetables and reduce to concentrate the flavors.
Once cooked, simply purée the cooked vegetables with an immersion blender, then strain out the solids through a fine mesh strainer. (If you still have a lot of solids in your vegetable broth, strain again through cheese cloth.) At this point, you can reduce your vegetable broth for a more intense flavor if you’d like.
Once cooled, we freeze our vegetable broth in quart-sized zipper seal bags. Freeze them flat on a small baking sheet for easy storage – then thaw when you are ready to use the vegetable broth as needed for recipes.
So about that beautiful stock pot we used to make our Vegetable Broth…that is Hammer Stahl’s 12 quart Dutch oven – a wonderful, heirloom-quality, multi-gauge stainless steel pot that we absolutely loved cooking with. (My husband Jack is hard to please when it comes to his cookware – and he loved this pot.)
Hammer Stahl is one of the oldest manufacturers of cookware in North America. They offer 7-ply American Clad Cookware, German steel cutlery, and a full assortment of stainless steel bakeware and other accessories.
Their multi-clad cookware transfers heat evenly and efficiently, and the surgical-grade steel is durable and easy to clean. We cooked our vegetable broth over a flame on the stove for three hours without any sort of heat diffuser, and we experienced no sticking or burning, no discoloration, and cleanup was a breeze!
The cookware also has stay-cool handles. It’s dishwasher safe, induction-ready, and comes with a lifetime guarantee.
While we’ve only tested this 12-quart pot, if all of their products are of equal quality – you can’t go wrong with Hammer Stahl. If you are serious about investing in some quality pots and pans, cookware, or knives that will last you a lifetime, Hammer Stahl definitely deserves a place on your list of brands to consider.
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Vegetable Broth
Ingredients
24 Tuscan kale stems
6 large Tuscan kale leaves
12 large sprigs flat leaf parsley with stems
1 large or 2 small sweet onions, root removed, skin left on and quartered
2 medium leeks, top six inches removed and remining stalk cleaned of all sand, then cut into quarters
5 stalks celery quartered
8 medium carrots, tops removed, scrubbed but not peeled and quartered
6 large garlic cloves peeled and smashed
2 plum tomatoes, seeds removed and coarsely chopped
3–4 small to medium parsnips, peeled, stemmed and quartered
3–4 egg shells (these help with clarity)
4 medium sprigs fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
8 peppercorns
1 tablespoon Dulse flakes (optional – this is dried seaweed. You can find this at most supermarkets or online.)
7 quarts cold water
1 tablespoon kosher or sea salt
Instructions
Place everything except the salt in a 12-quart pot.
Slowly over the course of one hour, bring to a simmer. Use the full hour to slowly bring the ingredients up to simmer.
Simmer 45 minutes then add the salt. It is important not to add the salt until this step.
Simmer 90 minutes and remove from heat.
This next part is optional but I feel it really adds more flavor to the broth. It also adds sediment unless you strain it through a fine sieve. Using an emersion blender, break up the pieces until just about everything is rice sized. OK if you miss a few pieces.
Pour it through a strainer and squeeze the solids to extract as much liquid as possible.
Discard the solids and strain again through a fine mesh strainer or a strainer lined with cheese cloth.
At this point you should have about one gallon of broth. Season with additional salt or pepper as needed.
The broth is mild so to intensify, you could place the now-strained broth back into the pot and cook down to two quarts for a very strong vegetable flavor.
Cool and pour into zipper seal quart bags, squeezing out all air and freeze for later.
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Notes
*A note about vegetable broth: Too much of this vegetable or not enough of that vegetable can change the final flavor drastically. This broth is intentionally mild and should be used as a base – you can use available seasonal ingredients to change the flavor profile as you wish.
Lynda Fleetwood says
I would love to have a “good” knife – and I think I would make a stir-fry with lots of cut up veggies!!!
Sandy says
May be boring to some but I would love a great knife for cutting lots of apples to make sauce
Jeannine says
I would use this great knife with all of my soup recipes. I make a pot of soup every week and freeze it by servings so I have a variety for my family.
Shannon Deaton says
I’ll be using the knife to prep the vegetables for the vegetable broth recipe you posted today. It looks most excellent!
Betty P says
I new knife! I would make homemade Sunday tomato sauce, the kind that simmers all day and makes your mouth dance when you eat it!
sarah says
i would make my chicken stir fry with peanut sauce!
Ken Plank says
This is a good looking knife. I do a lot of stir-frying, this would come in handy!
Starla says
Wow, what an awesome knife. Also, beautiful broth. I have always been a huge fan of broths. I would make my Nana’s seafood risotto with the knife. She passed away last year and I miss her every second of my day!
MaryB says
I would make a huge veggie salad platter first. A good knife is indispensable! This broth looks easy and delicious. Thanks for the recipe
Joana Mains says
I just went on the Mediterranean Diet and this would help in cutting up all of the vegetables, herbs and fruit for this eating plan.