Vegetable stock and soup from scratch

One of the minor benefits of moving house and/or countries is that you get to start over with filling up your fridge and freezer. Our freezer situation in Australia was a little challenging last year, because the freezer section of our combined fridge/freezer stopped cooling effectively. We were fortunate to be able to borrow a full-sized, rather old (but effective!) freezer from my parents, which gave heaps of space but needed to live in the garage and thus required a trip outside to access. As our move was on the horizon, I also refrained from stocking it too full.

Vegetable scraps post stock making.

All of this means that when we reached London, I was pleased to have a functioning fridge/freezer and the opportunity to stock it up. In particular, I wanted to use my new freezer to store vegetable scraps that could. in time, turn into vegetable stock.

Stock

We don't have a garden at all here and didn't have much outdoor space in Australia, so I have never had a compost bin. A large proportion of our rubbish seems to be vegetable scraps - things like carrot ends and peelings, the ends of zucchinis (courgettes) and broccoli, potato peelings, and the end bits of onions. It seems wasteful throwing them out when I know they could be put to use. The notion of putting these scraps into a container or sealed bag in the freezer, to later be turned into stock, has appealed to me for some time. 

Making stock is hardly difficult and I can't proclaim any new magical method today. After collecting scraps for a while, I simply covered them with water and a teaspoon of salt, and allowed the mix to simmer for two hours. At the end, I drained the liquid off, abandoned the soaked vegetable ends, and was left with about four cups of stock.

Repackaged stock

I used one cup of the stock to make soup on the weekend, and froze the rest for future use. Stock isn't very expensive to buy, so this isn't a big money saver, but it is very satisfying and I suspect gives a more nutritious outcome than packet equivalents. I will definitely be keeping it up - I have a new collection of vegetable ends to start!

Vegetable stock

An easy way to put vegetable scraps to good use

Makes 4 cups

Print recipe

Ingredients

Approximately 4 cups of vegetable scraps, saved in the freezer from whatever you have to hand

4 cups of water

1 teaspoon of salt

Method

Rinse the frozen vegetable scraps under cold water and then place in a saucepan. Cover with the 4 cups (or so) of water and stir in the teaspoon of salt. Bring to near boiling point and then reduce heat to low and allow to simmer, covered, for approximately 2 hours.

Drain the liquid from the vegetable scraps. Use straight away or freeze as desired. Discard the vegetable scraps.

Vegetable soup

A never-fail, nutrition-packed light meal; other vegetables will work so feel free to vary the ingredient list to suit what you have to hand

Serves 4

Print recipe

Ingredients

1 cup vegetable stock (see recipe above)

2 brown onions, diced

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1-1/2 tsp dried oregano

1 tin (375g / 1-1/2 cups) tinned tomatoes

2 medium carrots, chopped

1 large potato, peeled and chopped

1/2 large celeriac, peeled and chopped

1 cup cooked brown lentils

1/2 cup water or as needed

Method

Drizzle a small amount of the vegetable stock in the bottom of a large saucepan and use it to saute the onions and garlic. When softened, add the oregano, tinned tomatoes, carrots, potato and celeriac, along with approximately half of the remaining stock. Bring to near boiling point, stir, and then add the remaining stock and reduce heat to low. Allow to simmer, covered, for at least 1 hour on low heat.

Add the lentils before serving and use the additional water to thin down the soup as desired.

Do you save vegetable scraps for stock or other purposes?

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