Kitchen Scraps to Vegetable Stock

I love surprise days off work! The campus closed today due to wacky weather so we stayed home, cleaned the house and I was finally motivated to make vegetable stock.

Although purchasing vegetable stock or broth is one of the easiest things to do, it's also one of the easiest things to make. We have been saving kitchen scraps (mainly onions, celery, carrots) in the freezer for a few weeks now...just waiting for a day like today!

First, I sorted through the scraps. The best are onions, celery, leafy greens, carrots, mushrooms, garlic and leeks. But don't limited yourself...go wild. Skip out on using anything rotten...that is just a bad idea all around. Also, chunk the onion skins. Once sorted, rinse and scrub.

To really get the good stuff out, heat a little oil in your stock pot and let your veggies sweat a bit before adding any water. During this phase, I added a little thyme, parsley, peppercorns and a couple bay leaves.

Next, cover with water and let simmer for an hour. This was my favorite part because the aroma filled my house and made me so stinkin' happy!

Lastly, remove from heat and drain.

Let the liquid cool and then transfer to your container. Since we are planning on freezing until we need stock, I transferred to freezer bags. I used two bags...just to be safe!

And that's it! We now have tasty, homemade vegetable stock waiting for us next time we are craving a yummy winter soup! We took the remaining veggies out to our compost. It feels great knowing we got one more use out of those kitchen scraps before tossing them! Win, Win!