Summer Vegetable Stock
For me, this is an
indispensable recipe from the original Greens Cookbook. I always
keep a few quarts of this on hand to complement the dishes where
chicken or turkey
stock just won't work, or to substitute for turkey stock if I am
feeding a vegetarian. The tomatoes and potatoes and yeast make
for a relatively cloudy stock, but that's fine by me when it tastes
this good. I alter the order of the ingredients a
little based on my preferences for which I want more deeply cooked or
carmelized.
This recipe makes about cups of stock, depending on how much you press
out of the vegetables.
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
it's ok to use all olive oil if you want to avoid the butter, but some
fat is necessary if you're going to bring out the vegetables' flavor by
sauteeing and browning them first
1 onion
8 stems parsley
2 bay leaves
1 or 2 stems basil
several stems of marjoram
few stems of other summer herbs if
available--savory, lovage, borage (leaves)
2 carrots
2 celery stalks
1 cup eggplant
1 potato (I count a large Idaho baker as
2, a medium yukon gold or red potato as 1)
4 summer squash (small zucchini,
patty pan, yellow crookneck, etc)
4 ounces mushrooms (4-6 dried shiitake also work great here, if
pre-soaked and sliced)
1 handful green beans
4 leaves of chard with stems (lettuce
is also fine here, but spinach
4 tomatoes (canned work ok in a pinch, and
are much better than out-of-season flavorless things)
1 teaspoon
yeast flakes (this is the yellow stuff sold as 'nutritional yeast', not
to be confused with baker's or brewer's yeast)
1 teaspoon salt
8 cups cold water
Wash all the vegetables except the onion. Trim any dry/brown/off
bits.
Peel the onion, discard the skin, and slice the onion thinly.
In a good-sized stockpot (I routinely prepare double or triple versions
of this recipe in a 16 quart stockpot, although the triple batches are
always a bit tricky until the vegetables start to soften and collapse),
heat the butter and olive oil. Add the sliced onion, and washed
stems of herbs and cook until the onion is translucent, or if you want
a deeper flavored stock, until it gets rather brown and
carmelized. Stir from time to time, but you're going to be
chopping the other vegetables as it goes, so this is not a high-heat
fast-moving sautee.
While it cooks, thinly slice the carrots and celery; add them and keep
cooking.
Slice & add the eggplant and potato, and keep cooking. By now
any true notion of sauteeing is gone, you're more 'sweating' the
vegetables, but the main point is that you want to cook them a good
deal before adding the water, so they'll brown a little and develop
more flavor than if they were dropped straight into cold water.
It takes a bit of force to be sure nothing is sticking/burning on the
bottom by this point.
Work through the squash, mushrooms, green beans, chard or lettuce the
same way--slice thinly, add, stir. Slice the tomatoes (or
coarsely chop canned peeled tomatoes), and add with the yeast, and
salt. Add the cold water now, or cook a little longer until
you're happy with the doneness of the vegetables. Then bring it
all to a simmer and cook for about 45 minutes.
Strain the stock: I usually set up my other 16 quart pot with a
heavy duty colander over it first, to get the big pieces of vegetables
out of the way, then rinse the first pot and strain the stock back into
it through a finer strainer lined with cheesecloth or a jelly
bag.
At this point you can use the stock, refrigerate it for a few days, or
freeze it for months.
Because this is a low-acid food, even with the tomatoes, I can it at
pressure with my pressure canner. You should follow the directions provided
with your canner, or use a reliable guide like the Ball Blue Book.
(If you do this one wrong it can kill you). I routinely go for
overkill on this one--my ball guide calls for pints 30 minutes at 10
lbs and quarts 35 minutes at 10 pounds, and my pressure canner doesn't
have an adjustable gauge, so I generally do 40 minutes at 15 lbs, not
worrying about my mix of quarts, pints, and half pints, because I'm
timing for the largest jars in the batch.
Once canned, the stock lasts indefinitely at room temp: I've
never had any last much more than a year, because I go through it
pretty quickly, but occasionally I find a little jar that slipped
behind something else and is 2-3 years old, and it's just fine.
And because I virtually always use my stock in soups and stews, I am
always heating it up again to boiling and usually keeping it there for
a while, which is recommended for all low-acid foods--just in case a
few botulism spores got in there and made some toxin, boiling for some
minutes will break down the toxin and kill the bacteria.
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