Slow Cooking in the CityJust another WordPress weblog

I am a big fan of lentils. They are delicious, cheap, and packed full of iron and protein. One of my favorite lentil dishes is dal, a major food in Indian cuisine that has a wide range of variations. I was searching around online this weekend for a dal recipe for this week and after skimming a dozen or so, I decided on one with yellow split peas (not lentils) and coconut milk that looked good.  It called for 4 cups of vegetable broth, which I added to the grocery list along with the rest of the ingredients.

However, as I was doing so it dawned on me that I probably had everything I needed in my kitchen to make the broth myself: some leftover spinach, an old bag of baby carrots, and a couple stalks of celery that I didn’t need for the quinoa salad, all of which would probably go to waste if I didn’t use them soon. So, in the spirit of new years resolution #2: Waste Less, I decided to make my own stock (something I had never done before). I modeled it after a recipe on the site Vegan Yum Yum, though there are hundreds out there that you could chose from. It turned out to be incredibly easy, made great stock (to be used in the dal later this week), and best of all it was free! Or at least I didn’t have to spend any additional money to make it- beats spending five bucks on a couple of cans at the supermarket.

Homemade Vegetable Broth (makes about 12 cups)

• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 6 large celery stalks, chopped
• 1 cup carrots (I used baby carrots, but that just because they were already in my fridge)
• 5 cloves garlic, chopped into quarters
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 gallon water (16 cups)
• 10 whole black peppercorns
• 2 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup soy sauce

Heat olive oil in the bottom of a large pot. Add in onions, celery, carrots, and garlic as you chop them, stirring occasionally. Add water, peppercorns and salt. Bring to a boil. Cover and reduce heat. Simmer for 1 hour.

After an hour, add soy sauce and simmer uncovered for another 30 minutes. Once the broth is done, pour it through a strainer into a large pitcher or bowl.  Press down on vegetables with a large spoon to get all the broth to strain into the bowl. Discard vegetables, let broth cool and use in your favorite recipe. I can’t wait to try it in the dal!

The broth will keep in the refrigerator for about a week. However, I had way more than I could use this week (I only needed 4 cups, leaving 8 left over) so I froze the rest in one and 2 cup containers to use at a later date. This way they will keep for a couple months.  Freezing them in small chunks instead of one big block makes it easier to use them in the future, when a recipe only calls for a cup or two.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 5:07 pm and is filed under cooking, recipes, vegan, vegetarian. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.