Thankful for…Homemade Broth!

Living in a big city offers many eco-boosting benefits: we walk every where, we have an extensive farmers market system and and we live in a reasonably-sized apartment that doesn’t require a ton of energy to heat and cool. With that said, I am still bummed that I can’t compost our food scraps. I’d estimate that nearly 50% of our trash is food leftovers. As I’m always on the look out for ways to reduce the amount of waste our family creates, I was thrilled to learn about an easy way to re-use vegetable bits and pieces that would otherwise end up in the landfill.

Instead of tossing out trimmed ends of celery, carrots and onions, I save them in a re-used plastic bag in the freezer. When I have a good amount saved up I drop the frozen veggies in a pot with several cups of water, boil for an hour or two, and then strain into storage containers. What a great way to re-use food and avoid buying broth in cans.

My honey-colored homemade vegetable broth tastes so good it can be eaten on its own as a simple and warming soup. Plus, it isn’t overloaded with sodium as I only added about 1/2 teaspoon of salt. As an added bonus, this batch made about $7.00 worth of store-bought broth. I am using a couple cups tonight to make homemade vegetarian stuffing (three of my sisters are vegetarians) for Thanksgiving dinner. Should be a real treat!

Did you like this? Share it:

Written by

More posts by:

7 Comments for this entry

  1. Courtnay says:

    you should look into BOKASHI composting. we do it inside, there is no odour, it works for traditional compost stuff as well as meat, dairy and bones, plus you get an amazing liquid fertilizer out of it. and the bin is smaller then your average garbage can! to bury it to allow it to finish its decomp you can just use a large planter with dirt on a balcony or even in your home.

  2. HomemadeMother says:

    Thanks for the tip, Courtnay! I'll look into it.

  3. Sara says:

    That is a WONDERFUL idea! Can't wait to try it. Thanks for sharing.

  4. Melissa @ HerGreenLife says:

    We just made a batch of homemade broth last night, and we're planning to use it to make corn chowder tonight.

    I usually go on to compost the strained vegetable material in my worm bin, after I let it dry out a bit. We're also in an apartment, but the worm bin works well for us because we can keep it in the basement. Lots of people keep them IN their apartments, but, while ours does not really have an odor, it does have some fruit flies, so it's nice to have it in the basement 🙂

  5. Kristie says:

    so you use any seasonings in the broth? I’d wanted to try this a while ago but the veggies I have left over the most are broccoli stems and I read somewhere that broccoli didn’t taste good in vegetable broth. I guess I’ll try it anyways rather than just tossing them out 🙂

    • Maureen says:

      I don’t use any seasonings in the veggie broth – just left over bits of onion, garlic, carrots and celery.

      If you find yourself with lots of broccoli stems, you can incorporate them into a cream of broccoli soup. I also chop them up and add them to stri-fry. They cook up very nicely and add texture and flavor.

    • Jen says:

      I actually ran into a great use for broccoli stems a couple weeks ago. Peel them, slice very thin, then let them marinate in your favorite dressing or marinade. You can even use them in place of cucumbers for cucumber salad. The one I tried was some sort of Teriaki marinade. They are very crunchy and good!

Leave a comment

Cancel Reply