How to make homemade vegetable broth that is hearty enough to enjoy alone as soup and works perfectly as a replacement to boxed stock in your favorite recipes. You will never want to buy the boxed broth again.
How to Make Vegetable Broth
We love rich chicken and bone broths so it was a challenge to create a meatless vegetable broth that makes us just as happy. After a few tries, we came up with this rich, hearty broth recipe. When I’m sipping away, I even question whether or not there were bones used! It’s that good.
I often enjoy this veggie broth alone without anything added (it’s so satisfying) and also use it as a substitute to chicken broth in my favorite soup recipes (see this vegetable soup and this potato soup).
Three Tricks For The BEST Vegetarian Broth
For Rich, Satisfying Broth, Roast The Vegetables. Roasting onion, carrots, celery, tomatoes, and garlic until nicely brown intensifies the flavor of the broth. It also adds color. The roasted vegetables add a rich, satisfying quality to the broth.
Add tomatoes. Tomatoes add sweetness, color, and umami. Tomatoes are naturally high in glutamate, which means they help out with that “fifth taste.” Umami makes dishes taste good — it adds that something something. By adding the tomatoes to the broth, it becomes rich and crave-worthy.
Use dried mushrooms. Even though we don’t add any bones or meat to this recipe, it was important for us to still have some “meatiness” in the broth. Mushrooms — especially dried — are the solution. Just 1 ounce of dried mushrooms turns this veggie broth from okay to something you actually question whether or not it’s vegetarian or vegan.
With those three easy tricks, you can make rich, crave-worthy vegetable broth in under 2 hours. We sip on it during the day, have used it to make vegetable noodle soups, and have already used it in some of our favorite soup recipes. This is definitely something to add to your kitchen — it even freezes up to 3 months!
Here Are Some Recipes Where We Use Vegetable Broth
- This Homemade Vegetable Soup is healthy, easy to make, and tastes fantastic. It’s also vegan when you use vegetable broth!
- Our Lentil Soup with Lemon and Turmeric is plant-based, nutritious, and hearty.
- For a creamy soup, try our Creamy Potato Soup. This veggie broth works great as a substitute to chicken broth.
- This Meatless Bean Chili calls for water, but replacing the water with veggie broth would add so much additional flavor.
The Best Vegetable Broth
- PREP
- COOK
- TOTAL
This homemade vegetable broth is hearty enough to enjoy alone as soup and works perfectly as a replacement to boxed stock in your favorite recipes. Roasting is the secret for rich and hearty vegetable broth. When seasoned well, we find this veggie broth just as satisfying as bone broth. Think of the recipe below as a guide and feel free to add any vegetable scraps in your fridge or freezer. Leeks, turnips or mushroom scraps are all excellent when added to the broth. For even more richness, we add dried mushrooms — these can be purchased online and are often found in the spice aisle of larger grocery stores. They pack a punch and add a “meatiness” to the broth.
You Will Need
1 pound onion (3 medium)
1 pound carrots (5 to 6 medium)
1/2 pound celery (4 to 5 ribs)
1 pound tomatoes (4 small)
4 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 ounce dried mushrooms such as porcini, oyster or shiitake
Half bunch fresh parsley, leaves and stems or just use the stems
3 sprigs fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
1 to 2 cups vegetable scraps from fridge or freezer, optional
1 teaspoon sea salt, optional
12 cups water, preferably filtered
Directions
- Roast Vegetables
1Heat oven to 425 degrees F. Grab a rimmed baking sheet or a 9-inch by 13-inch baking dish for roasting the vegetables.
2Peel onion and roughly chop into 1-inch chunks. Scrub carrots and celery clean and cut roughly into 1-inch chunks. Rinse tomatoes and if they are large, half or quarter them.
3Add onion, carrots, celery, tomato, and the garlic to baking sheet or pan. Toss with olive oil then roast 15 minutes. Stir vegetables and roast another 15 minutes. Stir once more, and then roast until the vegetables are nicely browned and the tomatoes are caving in, another 10 minutes or so.
- Make Broth
1Cover dried mushrooms with about 1/2 cup of cold water and set aside for 5 minutes.
2Spoon the roasted vegetables into a tall stockpot. Add 1 cup of water to the baking sheet or pan then stir it around, scraping up as much of the browned bits stuck to the bottom as you can. Pour over the vegetables in the stockpot.
3Add the parsley, thyme, bay leaves, vegetable scraps you need to use up, and the salt (if using).
4Add the partially rehydrated mushrooms then pour the water they are sitting in through a fine mesh strainer to catch any grit. Add the strained mushroom water to the pot with vegetables.
5Cover with 11 cups of water. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Cook, partially covered, for 45 minutes.
6Strain broth and use immediately, refrigerate up to 3 days, or freeze up to 3 months. When using, taste the broth and adjust the seasoning with additional salt or if you are okay with using it, a few dashes of fish sauce.
Adam and Joanne's Tips
- Dried mushrooms alternative: If you are unable to find dried mushrooms, you can add mushroom scraps or chopped mushrooms to the onions and carrots when they roast. Dried mushrooms will be stronger, but this will still make a delicious broth.
- Nutrition facts: The nutrition facts provided below are estimates. We have used the USDA database to calculate approximate values. We have omitted salt since you will need to add to your tastes. The nutrition facts are for 1 cup of broth.
If you make this recipe, snap a photo and hashtag it #inspiredtaste — We love to see your creations on Instagram and Facebook! Find us: @inspiredtaste
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I just made your homemade veg broth—wow! This is the best! I love broths and soups. So I added scrap corn cob and over grown okra. I made two batches and this first cup I am eating the veggies in it as a soup. It is great as a whole soup as well as a broth. I agree this is the best veggie broth I have made! Do yourself a favor and make it! Your body will thank you for all the minerals you will get! Usually broth helps you wake up if it’s day time and you sleep if it’s night time. Thank you so much for developing this recipe! Yay!
I know that fresh would be better but can you use dried thyme? Thank you in advance!! I cannot wait to try this!
Dried thyme is definitely an option, I’d start with 1/2 teaspoon, taste and go from there.
Okay this is the BEST- I just want to eat this for the rest of my life! It has such deep flavour and it’s so good I eat it on its own. For increased depth of flavour I recommend adding nutritional yeast (don’t skip this). This broth is wonderful 🙂 Thank you for the recipe!
Hi I’m a vegan and I was going to make this into a ramen. However we are trying to stay away from flour so I am going to make the noodles from spiraled butternut squash, spaghetti squash, acorn squash and zucchini. I just would like to know if this will last longer than 3 days in the fridge because I prep my meals a week ahead of time so it lasts the week.
The broth will likely last up to 5 days.
Made this tonight and it’s the best vegetable broth I’ve ever had. I can’t wait to use this broth in my soup dishes!
I am a fan of all of your recipes. I love the taste from the roasted vegetables. I especially enjoy the broth during Lent for fasting. The broth is delicious and satisfying.
How many people does the broth serve
It really depends on what you are using it for. The recipe yields about 10 cups of broth.
Made this tonight to take to my Mom in the hospital in the morning. I went pretty much by the recipe but I added more garlic and instead of veggie scraps I had a bag of frozen edamame that I know my mom will never use anywhere else… Not sure how it ended up in her freezer .. lol. Hope she likes the broth. Hope it helps her heart… It’s still simmering in the pot I haven’t tasted it yet.
I love soups. Can’t wait to try this one.
By the way this broth sounds amazing.
Hi, I’m from Africa, Kenya in particular. I’m a fan of your recipes. I just love the clear illustrations and they are healthy too. Today I was looking for a sweet potato recipe, then I came across the lentil soup so I will try it out today. Thanks
What do you do with the cooked veggies that you strain out of the broth at step 6? All I can think of is blending them up separately into a creamy soup. Thanks.
Hi Mel, the veggies are super soft. They have given most of their flavor to the broth but you can always blend them into a soup.
I am 84 years old and my wife can’t cook anymore so I do the cooking and the buying and the shopping and I am interested in cooking Thank you John
Call me crazy for cooking up veggie broth when it’s 110 degrees out but I’m just finishing a 12-day cleanse and freshly squeezed OJ and veggie broth is the order of the day. I loved this recipe. I added sliced cucumber and lots of cilantro…not sure about the cucumber but definitely tasted notes of cilantro. It’s not for everyone but it sure was tasty to me! 🙂