All you need is a good veggie stock
Hi everyone, today I’d like to share my veggie stock recipe. I adapted it from Vegan Yum Yum (who is sad she doesn’t blog anymore? But I still go back to get recipes from her archives) and I make a big batch of this every fortnight just so I always have some on hand…
Recipe (in a pot of water):
5-6 small turnips and leaves
1 large carrot
1 large onion
5-6 cloves of garlic
A big handful of dried mushrooms
A pinch of salt
1 tbs of shoyu
I boil this up for an hour and then cover the pot with its lid for another 2-3 hours. The reason why I do this is because the heat within the soup still draws out the flavours of the vegetables and it’s just too hot to strain right after boiling. I use a nut milk bag to strain the liquid away from the pulp.
I use veggie stock in a lot of my cooking and it’s key to make veggie food more flavourful.
Soba noodles in veggie broth. I just add white miso, a bit more shoyu, and sesame oil to this soup — a very simple but satisfying meal.
I put veggie stock into pumpkin soup. I don’t really have a fixed recipe but I always chuck in cumin, garlic, a green onion, and maybe some paprika and saffron sometimes. I may add in some cayenne if I want some spice.
I usually throw away the pulp but I had a brain wave to make vegan dumplings. I’ve tried making all-veggie dumplings but used an egg as a binder but after that experience I felt that the mushed up veggie pulp could hold its own quite well. What I did was to add some chilli oil, shoyu, black pepper and sesame oil to the veggie pulp and stuffed them into non-egg gyoza wrappers. Success!
Well almost…one veggie dumpling fell apart when I picked it up from my makeshift steamer (basically a shallow dish in a pot with some water to create steam). It was delicious…and completely vegan!
This is what the stuffing looks like…not pretty but it was very good. I’m happy it is soy-free too because a lot of the veggie dumplings in restaurants tend to incorporate soy so I seldom eat dumplings. I mean I do eat soy now and again in restaurants because I would rather have tofu than eat meat as an alternative.
I might put a bit of veggie stock in quinoa pilafs, too.
Veggie stock comes in handy when I don’t want a curry-flavoured lentil dish. This one has red lentils with tomatoes, veggie stock, white miso, a piece of kelp (inspired by Ginger Is The New Pink), onion, garlic, and some sea salt.
I make my own veggie stock because there is no such thing as organic/natural veggie stock here. You could probably find veggie stock cubes but they are under brands like Know which taste like they are full of MSG and other yucky chemicals. If I lived the US or Australia, I might get lazy because I could buy healthy, chemical-free veggie stock, but for now, I feel better making it. It doesn’t take a lot of time and it’s just part of my weekend routine to boil up a batch.
