I love Trader Joe’s hearty vegetable broth. But with the nearest Trader Joe’s thousands of miles away, I figured it was high time to make my own vegetable broth. (Not to mention that I never, ever succeeded in using the entire aseptic container of broth at once and I had to freeze the remainder anyway!) Plus, making my own broth is just so… healthy and frugal!

I looked at a few vegetable broth recipes to get an idea of what to do, and then I ventured out and created my own because I didn’t quite have all the ingredients that you would have access to if you were making this in the U.S. Here’s what I added:

• 10 cups water
• 3 small onions, quartered
• 2 large potatoes, chopped in large pieces {I peeled them but you can leave the skin on if you like.}
• 4 green onions, chopped in big pieces
• 1 bay leaf
• 3 garlic cloves, crushed
• a bunch of baby carrots
• 3 celery sticks, chopped coarsely
• 1 tbsp. soy sauce
• salt to taste

Uncooked veggies that I used to make this broth.

The recipes I was looking at suggested adding:

• a bunch of parsley leaves, coarsely chopped
• a couple of leeks, cleaned and chopped
• parsnips
• they suggested regular carrots, but I only had baby carrots on hand
• 2 bay leaves instead of one
• mushrooms
• celery root (celeriac)

Basically, you sauté the onions in a little olive oil and add the veggies. Add water and seasonings and simmer on low for 1 – 1 1/2 hours.

The broth after 1 1/2 hours—veggies are all cooked down!

Then you strain the stock through a fine-mesh sieve or cheesecloth. You can either use it right away, or what I’m going to do is freeze mine in ice cube trays so I’ll have it easily accessible for use in future recipes.

This picture may look slightly confusing. I didn’t have cheesecloth or a sieve so I used a produce bag that I got from ReusableBags.com. It had been a bigger bag but I accidentally shrunk it when I put it in the dryer once. So it was almost like a sieve or cheesecloth, until the potatoes began squishing through.

If you’d like ideas of other goodies you can add to your homemade vegetable broth, visit Lolo’s site. She has an awesome photo tutorial on broth-making!

This post is linked to Kitchen Tip Tuesday and Works for Me Wednesday.