Don’t waste your money buying vegetable broth at the store! Making your own vegetable stock is easy, and it doesn’t cost a thing, because you use scraps like onion skins that you’d normally throw away.

And there are a lot more uses for vegetable broth than soups and stews—risotto, gravy, polenta, and jambalaya are just a few of the things I use my veggie broth to make.

How to Make Vegetable Broth

Basically, you just keep any bits you trim off your veggies that you’re not going to eat, like carrot peels or parsley stems. Store them in a bag in your freezer for making broth.

Throwing wilted vegetables or herbs into your broth mix is fine, but obviously don’t use anything dirty, moldy, or rotten!

Scraps to Save:

• onion skins
• garlic skins
• ginger root peel
• carrot peels
• tops of leeks
• leaves of celery, beets, and carrots
• wilted greens or shriveled tomatoes
• stems of herbs
• mushroom stems

Basic Vegetable Broth Recipe

Makes approximately 2 quarts

Ingredients:

• 3 to 4 cups of veggie scraps
• 3 quarts of water
• 2 teaspoons salt

Directions:

1. Whenever your scrap bag is full, throw everything into a stock pot, top it off with water, and add a couple of teaspoons of salt.
2. Bring the water up to a boil over high heat, then cover the pot and reduce heat to low.
3. Simmer for an hour (or longer to get more flavor).
4. When cool, remove the larger pieces of veggie scraps. (I put them in a colander, then place it over the pot and squish the veggies with my ladle to get even more of their good juices out.) Then pour the broth through a fine mesh strainer and into some clean jars.
5. Seal the jars and refrigerate. Veggie broth should keep for about a week in the fridge.