About every 6 months, I take an hour or so to transform this:
Into a homemade vegetable bouillon I can stick in my freezer. I pre-chop a bit and then pulse the vegetables in batches in my food processor. The optimal texture is shown in the front of the picture below. The veg in the back still needs more pulsing.
Ultimately, it’s a thick mash that never freezes solid because of the salt content. I pop it in freezer bags and always have it to make instant vegetable broth.
Homemade Vegetable Bouillon for the Freezer
A few times a year I make up a batch of vegetable bouillon to stash in my freezer. I never have to buy broth for my cooking, and it's so handy to just scoop out what I need.
Ingredients
- 5 oz leeks, white and light-green parts only (from 3 leeks), roughly chopped
- 7 oz fennel bulb (from 1-2 bulbs of fennel), roughly chopped
- 7 oz carrots (from about 4 large carrots), roughly chopped
- 7 oz celery (from about 2 large ribs of celery), roughly chopped
- 3.5 oz shallot, peeled (from about 2 large shallots)
- 3 medium cloves garlic
- 9 oz kosher salt (about 1 cup)
- 1.5 oz parsley (about 1 big bunch)
- 2 oz cilantro (about 1 big bunch)
Instructions
- Basically you just pulse everything in the food processor! I do mine in batches.
- Store it in 2 different quart-sized ziploc bags in the freezer.
Notes
I do use a kitchen scale, but I’m sure the recipe is forgiving!
Once it’s made, the high salt content keeps it from freezing solid, so it’s easy to scoop out one round teaspoon with one cup of water to make one cup of vegetable broth.
I did a blind taste-test between broth made with this homemade bouillon and broth made with the Better Than brand vegetable bouillon and my husband and I both prefer this. It has a brighter flavor, and I’m happy to have one less processed food with random additives in it.
TIP: I only pre-chop enough so that I don’t have big pieces that don’t pulse well. Otherwise, I let the food processor do the work!