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Vegetable Stock



This isn't a dish. It is the mother of soup (and the mentor of stews, thesis adviser of sauce).

Ingredients: use the old the unworthy and the strangely shaped this is very flexible chuck in bits of peel, basically any veg bar potatoes. Most of the time just use commercial stock but you can only trust yourself when it really matters.

Carrots (essential)
Onions (essential)
Garlic (essential)
Celery (essential)
Various odds and ends of (raw) veg
Herbs and spices (experiment here but parsley is almost always welcome)
Parmesan rind (nice to have)
Bay leaf (nice to have)
Neutral oil
Water

  1. Chop roughly your carrots and about half your onions and garlic and any other root veg you’re using and roast on 18 for about an hour
  2. Cut up your celery and onion fairly small and saute in a big old pan(hereafter stockpot) allowing the vegetables to catch, don't stir too much. After the onion and celery have started to soften add any of the veg you haven’t started roasting
  3. Pour a little water into the stockpot and scrape to bottom of the bowl (deglaze) before adding water and simmering. At this point add your Parmesan rind if you have it.
  4. Add your roast vegetables to the pan and add water to the roasting tray whilst it is still hot and scrape the brown bits off the bottom add this to the stock pot
  5. Simmer for as long as you care to (30 min’s) then sieve to remove the vegetables

Use your stock to make something. or drink it if you're the kind of maniac who likes drinking stock.

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