I made homemade veggie stock these days for my SO. I’m not so much into veggies personally but she likes it and I made a batch. It’s really easy and it only takes some time to dry (where you don’t have to give it too much attention). This is not so much intended for making soup (although it will somehow work too), but merely for seasoning, for example for sauces and stews.

You can use leftover uncooked veggies and also kitchen scraps for this, as long as you make sure they’re clean and reasonably free of roots or hard skins. This is what I did:

 

 

 

 

Ingredients I used:

2 medium onions
3 cloves garlic 
3 medium carrots 
1 stalk leeks 
5 stalks celery  
1/2 bunch parsley

2 tbsp. salt 
Ground pepper 
Some nutmeg
2 tbsp. sugar 

Just chop up everything coarsely and run it through your kitchen shredder to get small, Julienne-like strips. Add in the seasonings (don’t be too sparing here!) and mix everything up well Put the mixture on a parchment-lined baking sheet in a thin layer.

Dry in the oven at 70 °C with hot air circulation for about 5-6 hrs. (or until everything is crisp-dry). To speed up everything (and get the house smelling) stick a wooden spoon in the oven door to help getting the moist air out better. Depending on how much veggie-mix you have, you might want to check the dryness every hour or so and stir it upside down to get the still moist parts to the surface. Everything will shrink a lot.

When this is completed, the time of final and utter disappointment has come: Put everything into your blender and grind it down to a granulate consistency. Cry bitter tears over how much the volume of all your pretty veggies has shrunk into powder, but know that this is concentraded flavour and absolutely natural!