Soup Broth 102: Veggies Rock!

I love veggies.  I grew up with my dad & grandpa gardening, which gave me a love of fresh food that I can never deny.  I especially love root vegetables.  Turnips, parsnips, beets, potatoes, carrots & rutabaga are some of the most flavorful and wonderful veggies on the planet.  The men in my house are not terribly fond of such things so I rarely have them around.  Potatoes of course, they love, but I have yet to convince them of the wonders of the rest of that group.

  

Today is a different story though.  Today I'm making my vegetable stock so I get to use all my favorite things and they'll never know it when they eat it. The pile in the picture above is all I put in there, plus the roasted tomatoes & peppers from last night.  (I did keep a small portion of the peppers aside for tomorrow's beef stock.)

The oil in the bottom of the pan is the garlic infused oil I roasted them with as well as all the juices that came from that job.  all I did next was chop everything in huge chunks, put them in the pot and filled it with water.  I didn't add salt, as I said in the chicken stock post. You don't want to be worried about whether or not something will be too salty.  You can always add salt, but you can't take it away.  The only herb I added was the parsley.  The flavor of the veggies really stand on their own and don't need any kind of a boost.

I turned the fire up to bring them to a boil, then turn it down to a real low simmer and let it cook for  about 2 hours.  It might have been done in an hour, but what the heck?  I may as well let it simmer as long as I can.  It smells and looks gorgeous!  I hate the idea of tossing the veggies when I strain them, so I've done a double strain.  In other words, I strained off all the liquid then I sifted through the veggies to remove the stems, garlic skins, onion skins, etc., and left the veggies to cool.  Not totally sure what I'm going to do with them yet.  If nothing else, I can make a delicious meal for my dogs.  They would totally love that!

This is some beautiful, ruby red vegetable stock.  It yielded about 14 cups of stock.

Enjoy stocking up your freezer! Winter's going to yield some fabulous soups!