healthy laps

I absolutely love our CSA.  It helps out the farmers and we get freshly grown produce each week for a fraction of what I would be paying at the grocery store.  However, sometimes when we are away on the weekends, we end up with some extras!

I don’t want those extras (mostly carrots, celery and onions) to go to waste, so tonight I put the past 2 weeks of celery, carrots and onions together to make a homemade vegetable broth!

My plan is to make some soup this weekend, which I will be needing this broth for, so it was perfect timing.

Homemade Vegetable Broth

Ingredients:

• 1 pound celery
• 1 pound carrots
• 1 onion
• 3 cloves garlic
• 16 whole peppercorns
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce

Directions:

Start by washing and chopping your vegetables.

While chopping, add a few tablespoons of olive oil to a large stockpan over medium-low heat.  When each veggie is done being chopped, throw it in the pan and let it sizzle a bit.

Celery

Into the pot it goes…

Onion, very roughly chopped

Carrots, both orange and red

Did you know that red carrots are really orange on the inside?

Throw it all into the pot,

along with 3 cloves of galic (make sure you take off the peel),

16 peppercorns, give or take,

and 1 bay leaf.

Now, add 1 gallon of filtered water.

Turn up the heat and bring the water to a boil.  Then, cover and cook over medium-low heat for 1 hour.

After 1 hour, your broth will look more like this:

That means you did it right!!

Now, add your salt and soy sauce and any other seasonings you may want to add (taste it here to figure it out) and simmer for another 15-20 minutes so the flavors come out.

I cooked my veggie broth in a strainer pot, so that I could do this at the end instead of pouring the broth into a strainer.

It worked quite nicely.  I was left with a strainer full of veggies and a pot full of homemade broth!!

Discard, compost or blend your leftover veggies into a soup.  Unfortunately, mine went down the drain…

But, I was left with a delicious homemade veggie broth to add to my homemade soup this weekend.

Delicious!  And, very much worth the wait.

Filed under: CSA, Eating Laps, Recipes | Tagged: CSA, Eating Laps, homemade, recipe |