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(post, Katherine Deumling)
We’re nearing Super Bowl mania, so I figure I can use a sporty metaphor for this culinary, well, game changer. I first learned about homemade veggie bouillon just about a year ago, but it feels like it has been my dear friend in the kitchen for much, much longer than that. It wormed its way into my bag of tricks — at first slowly, and then persistently — so that now I can’t imagine cooking without it. The creative Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks wrote about this wonderful, frugal, easy, tasty, and just plain clever idea from Pam Corbin’s The River Cottage Preserves Handbook. So what is it? It is simply all the raw vegetables and herbs you might use in a really good vegetable stock, pulsed in the food processor with lots of salt, and then stored in a jar in the freezer. The salt content keeps it scoopable even when frozen. The veggies aren’t cooked, just weighed (a kitchen scale is handy for this recipe but not essential), and you can also adapt the mix of veggies a bit based on what you have. So with these simple steps, you get an intensely flavorful, fresh paste that turns a cup of water into a bright broth that enlivens any soup or sauce. I have a few quarts of homemade chicken stock in the freezer that, for some reason, I hoard for special occasions. I used to make the occasional vegetable stock, but honestly, the bags of leek and celery ends and shriveled carrots in the freezer rarely made it into a stockpot. I love the idea of making stock, but I've just never gotten into a good routine of doing it. [%image reference-image float=right width=400 caption="This bouillon can be scooped straight from the freezer."] But now, I don’t hoard, and I don’t worry about using up my precious stock. I use my veggie bouillon to cook grains (quinoa, barley, farro, rice). I use it in potato-leek soup; in risotto; in a macaroni and cheese dish inspired by Mark Bittman’s wonderful Creamy Cauliflower Mac; in the red lentil and winter squash dal I wrote about here recently; and in regular old lentil soup. For the quickest lunch or dinner, I bring a few cups of veggie bouillon to a boil, add some couscous, chopped vegetables, and maybe a bit of leftover chicken, and cook it all for just a few minutes before topping it all with some goat cheese. Voilà: instant soup! [[block(sidebar). h1.Featured recipes]] The recipe calls for what seems like an inordinate amount of salt, but if you can bring yourself to follow the recipe, it’s worth it. Once you mix 1 to 2 teaspoons of the paste with a cup of water and taste the broth, you’ll be glad you did. The broth is bright, fresh, and perfectly seasoned, and you can certainly adjust the amount of bouillon you add to each cup of water if you like things milder. This recipe also makes a huge batch — enough, probably, for 30 to 40 meals. So try not to worry about the salt. Feel smug, too, about how much money you’re saving by not buying expensive organic bouillon cubes. And — with the exception of the cilantro and dried tomatoes — all the veggies for this bouillon are readily available at our farmers' markets this time of year. So get cooking!
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