A Vegetable Broth for Sipping
The 2019 cookbook that has most opened, changed, and excited my culinary mind is Amy Chaplain’s Whole Food Cooking Every Day. It’s full of recipes that, in other hands and presented less elegantly, would leave me very skeptical. There’s a whole chapter devoted to tempeh, for example. I thought I’d given up on that stuff. But somehow her recipe, where it’s marinated and baked in a tamari-spiked blend of juices and coconut oil—has got me craving it. Then there’s an entire chapter for nut and seed milks, which I’d never thought I’d bother to find the time to make (even though I’ve got several fermentation projects occupying prime fridge real estate as I type…my resistance makes no sense). But, I don’t know, recipe titles like “Black Sesame Milk” and “Rosemary Macadamia and Pumpkin Seed Milk” intrigued me. Though to say I was intrigued doesn’t convey how quickly I rounded up the ingredients and started filling my fridge with homemade nut and seed milks. In Amy’s hands, I’m eager to step up, and to challenge my stale assumptions.
Another example is her Restorative Mineral-Mushroom Broth. Now I love a hot, savory broth that you can sip from a mug on a cold day—when I make brothy soups and noodle bowls I always set aside a cup to drink as I cook. But I never felt that a vegetable broth could be a comparable thing to bone broth. A veg broth is a warming and nutritious drink, whereas bone broth is theoretically more of a meal? Maybe I’ve been wrong about this for a long time, but leave it to Amy to get me to wake up. Her recipe is full of so many quiet and brilliant little tips, but some of the most immediate takeaways for me relate to:
Sea Vegetables: Seems like I’d always been taught to add, like, a piece of kombu to my dashi broth or veg stock when it needs a boost. While Amy’s recipe is a fairly large yield, there are four good strips of kombu—plus a cup of dulse flakes. Think bigger with the sea vegetables.
Mushrooms: She calls for 3/4 pound of fresh shiitakes, as well as a cup of dried ones, and a heaping handful of dried maitake mushrooms. Like the kombu, I’d always just tossed a couple in there. Obviously that was never enough.
Cooking time: A lot of the information I’ve retained about vegetable stock comes from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, a book I still cherish, and one detail that I’ve never forgotten relates to cooking time. Deborah says to simmer a vegetable broth for 1 hour, max, because “when the vegetables have given up their flavors, they have nothing more to offer.” Amy cooks her broth for 2 to 3 hours, and advises you to keep cooking util you’ve got a “good rich flavor.” Perhaps it relates to amping up the sea vegetables and mushrooms, but a fuller, richer flavor does indeed arrive with a doubled, or tripled, cooking time.
Her broth also calls for burdock roots, fennel, and fresh turmeric, in addition to a few more standard broth ingredients, and I confess I still haven’t yet made it as written. But my own working vegetable broth, below, has been improving immensely. I still treat it as a way to make something from scraps and odds and ends, and that informs my recipe below—I encourage you to improvise, too, based on whatever’s lingering in your fridge. This would work very well with a slow cooker, too. But rather than a supporting-role broth for cooking (which would be stock), this is one for sipping. Salt is key. You’ll probably need to add more than what seems right. And then I like a splash of apple cider vinegar to serve, a tip from my friend Crista, which zips it to life.
Vegetable Broth for Sipping
Makes about 3 quarts
Splash olive oil
2 teaspoons tomato paste
3 medium carrots, cut into chunks
1 large or 2 medium onions (white or yellow), quartered
3 celery stalks, cut into chunks
1 cup mushroom stems (shiitake, button mushrooms, crimini—whatever you’ve got)
Seeds from a winter squash (and peels, if you have them)
Small wedge of cabbage or a cauliflower core (a little cruciferous veg goes a long way)
3 garlic cloves, smashed
3-inch piece ginger, cut into chunks
Stems from 1 bunch of parsley
Two 4-inch pieces kombu
1/4 cup dulse flakes
1/4 cup dried shiitake or maitake mushrooms
5 whole peppercorns
Stems from 1 bunch cilantro
Salt
Apple cider vinegar, for serving
Cilantro or parsley leaves, for serving
Heat the oil in a stock pot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the tomato paste and fry it for a few minutes, until fragrant and it darkens a shade. Then add everything from the carrots through the peppercorns, and about 4 quart water (this is what will accommodate a Dutch oven—you could add more water in a stock pot). Raise the heat and as soon as it starts coming to a boil, turn it down to a simmer and let it gently bubble away for about 2 hours, tasting and adding salt as you go (start with a heaping teaspoon and go from there). It should have a “good rich flavor”!
Remove from the heat and add the cilantro stems. Let steep for at least 30 minutes, or until cool, then strain through a fine-mesh sieve or a cheesecloth-lined colander. (I like the cheesecloth draining because you can gather up the solids in the cheesecloth and really wring all the liquid out.) Divide between tupperware containers, then store (once cooled) in the fridge or freezer. It’ll keep for 2 or 3 days in the fridge, and for several months in the freezer.
To serve, heat up the broth til steam wafts across the surface, and transfer to bowls or mugs. Add a splash of apple cider vinegar—about a 1/2 teaspoon, not too much—to each serving. Garnish with a few grinds of black pepper and a few leaves of cilantro or parsley if you like.
