making vegetable stock

We made our own vegetable stock. First try, first time. We're saving scraps for the next batch. Here's what happened.

Earlier this week, we were going to make this potato-leek soup:

INGREDIENTS

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
2 leeks, white and light green parts washed and sliced into 1/4-inch slices
2 cups chopped yellow onion
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 large Yukon Gold potatoes (about 1 pound), peeled and cubed into 1/2-inch cubes
4 cups vegetable stock
2-3 teaspoons fresh rosemary leaves

1. Heat a 4-quart soup pot over medium heat and add the oil.

2. Add the leeks, onion, and sea salt and saute for about 5 minutes, stirring often, until the onion begins to turn translucent.

3. Add the garlic and stir well. Cook for 1 minute more.

4. Add the potatoes and vegetable stock, cover, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer. Cook 20 minutes.

5. Remove the soup from the heat and use an immersion/stick blender to blend the soup in the pot or ladle the soup into a blender, 1 cup at a time. Blend the soup with the fresh rosemary leaves until smooth and free of chunks. Pour smooth soup into a heat-proof bowl and continue until all of the soup has been blended.

6. Transfer the blended soup back to the original soup pot and warm over low heat until heated through. Serve hot.

Serves 4 - 6.

Adapted from The Great American Detox Diet, by Alex Jamieson (Rodale Press, 2005).

It would not really serve six. Not six people. We got four servings out of it.

The interesting part is the vegetable stock. The day before we made the soup, we made our own vegetable stock for the first time.

All of the vegetables or vegetable parts you don't necessarily want to use for anything else, set them aside in a container in the fridge. Onion skins, the ends of zucchini, garlic peel, corn husks, rubber carrots, greens past their prime, squash that's gone soft.

Put it all in a big pot, season it however you want, pour water on it, bring it to a boil and simmer it down for an hour or so.



After it simmers for about an hour, strain out the vegetables and vegetable parts and save the liquid in the fridge.

The nutrient-rich, flavorful stock from the exact vegetables shown in the pictures made the four-serving potato-leek soup and, like, a two-dozen-serving stew with two kinds of beans, tomatoes, corn, carrots and general goodness. Both dishes were very hearty. I brought them for lunch, I was full for the whole afternoon.