A good idea: quick fresh vegetable broth

I've just returned from a short trip to visit my mother. She's an excellent cook and, as always, fed us very well. She also passed along a clever new trick she'd learned for making an especially easy, clean tasting vegetable broth.

This broth is so simple and flexible that it doesn't rise to the level of a recipe. But it does have a method, and the method is this:

Take about two pounds of vegetables, mainly ones with a high water content, like lettuce, tomatoes, celery, cucumber, or bell peppers. Carrots are nice. Toss in odds and ends of whatever you have on hand, except for brassicas like broccoli or brussels sprouts, which are a bit too pungent. Skip the potatoes, too. But corn, spinach, summer squash, even a bit of onion -- go for it.

Then wash and chop the vegetables (the handiwork on display in the photo here is fussier than necessary) and put them in the blender with two cups of water. Blitz the hell out of them and strain the results through a fine sieve. The end.

Now you have a nice, fresh, uncomplicated broth with a bit of body to it that you can use for soup, a pilaf, a plate of lentils, breakfast strata, whatever you like.

Comments

[dbsmall]

Without straining it, if you add a bit of salt & pepper, you can then crock-pot tofu in it for a fine stew.

(Haven't done that for years, and think I will, this week.)

[redfox]

Mm, sounds good and easy. Indeed, not straining is surely good for any number of thicker and stewier applications.