Why would a meat-loving omnivore like me bother with vegetable stock when a chicken or beef stock is much sexier?
That’s because wife said to help her draw up a bunch of healthy recipes that are quick and easy to make for weekday afterwork dinners.
So a good stock is in order since it could form the base of so many quick and yummy dishes. So, just start with:
Ingredients:
2 medium-large onions, roughly cubed
2 medium-large carrots, roughly cubed
3 stalks of celery, roughly cubed
1 whole bulb of garlic, skins removed
1 bay leaf
A few black peppercorns
Roughly hack the vegetables into little cubes, just make sure you washed them thoroughly before. This is so increase the surface area so we can extract all the nutrients and flavor as fast as possible. I wasn’t about to spend 4 to 6 hours on Sunday night making stock when I have to work the next day. A quick tip about the garlic – to remove the skins fast, just cut off the top and bottom of the bulb then flatten the cloves with your knife. Then pick out the garlic cloves from the resulting rubble of skins.
Put everything in a pot with enough water to cover the vegetables then bring to boil. Once it starts to bubble, reduce the heat to a gentle simmer. Cover with a lid and set your kitchen timer to about one hour. No salt as I prefer full control when I use the stock for actual dishes.
Go watch a bit of TV or something.
An hour later, strain all the vegetables and solids and throw them away. You can eat the carrots if you want but the rest are quite inedible by itself. You should have a stock that is a little cloudy with not much color but with a light and fragrant aroma. You’re done.
There are many ways to keep the stock for future use but just bear in mind that bacteria fester best at temperatures between 5 and 60 degrees celsius so you’ll definitely want to minimize the stock’s exposure to this temperature range. What I did was to reduce the stock down after removing the vegetables until the volume is reduced to about 1/3 of the original then it’s kept in a few smaller containers then fridged. Not the best method because the cooling isn’t fast enough so I’ll just have to make sure that when I reheat later in the week, I bring it to boil for a few minutes to kill of any nasties.
So what can you do with a vegetable stock? That’s another post altogether but here’s some suggestions. You could cook a chicken breast in it with some pasta (crushed spaghetti works) into a chicken noodle soup. You could dilute the stock and use it to poach a fish filet, topped with some ginger slices, topped with a splash of heated oil. Or you could just throw in some chopped vegetables and make your own minestrone. Or you could poach a chicken breast in the minestrone then top it with a dollop of basil pesto.
Enjoy.
(sorry, no pics for this food post)
