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. You will never want to buy the boxed broth again. Jump to the Homemade Vegetable Broth Recipe or read on to see our tips for making it.
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.
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: This easy veggie tacos recipe is packed full of spice-roasted vegetables and black beans for a bit of protein. Jump to the Roasted Veggie Tacos Recipe.
How to Make Rich Hearty Vegetable Broth
This broth can be enjoyed alone without anything added (it’s so satisfying) or can be used in place of chicken stock and boxed stocks in your favorite recipes.
There are three tricks for making this ultra satisfying.
Roast the vegetables
Roasting onion, carrots, celery, tomatoes and garlic until nicely brown intensifies the broths flavor. It also adds color. The roasted vegetables add a rich, satisfying quality to the broth.
We love roasting vegetables. Here’s a few favorite recipes for you to check out: Our Favorite Roasted Vegetables (perfect as a side, on salads or in your favorite bowl recipes), Roasted Carrots with Parsley Butter and our Parmesan Roasted Cauliflower with Lemon (my favorite way to eat cauliflower).
Use 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.
Dried mushrooms are our secret weapon for many recipes. We use dried mushroom powder to make our homemade taco seasoning. Jump to the Taco Seasoning Recipe.
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!
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: You wouldn’t think that three ingredients can come together to make such a velvety and delicious tomato soup, but let me tell you. They can. Jump to the Tomato Soup Recipe.
Ultra Satisfying Homemade Vegetable Broth Recipe
- PREP
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
- Make Broth
Heat oven to 425 degrees F. Grab a rimmed baking sheet or a 9-inch by 13-inch baking dish for roasting the vegetables.
Peel 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. Add 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 then roast until the vegetables are nicely browned and the tomatoes are caving in, another 10 minutes or so.
Cover dried mushrooms with about 1/2 cup of cold water and set aside for 5 minutes.
Spoon 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.
Add the parsley, thyme, bay leaves, vegetable scraps you need to use up, and the salt (if using). Add 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.
Cover with 11 cups of water. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Cook, partially covered, for 45 minutes. Strain 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 Supertracker recipe calculator 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
I only have One Word to describe this Veggie Broth. AMAZING!!!!!!
I made this! it is very satisfying. thank you for the recipe 😁😆
After roasting the vegetables to use for broth, can they be added to the soup or do they have to be discarded? Thanks. Looking forward to trying this recipe!
After making the broth the vegetables will have given most of their flavor to the broth and will be quite mushy.
I’ve often pureed the roasted veggies (either in a food processor or with an immersion blender – depending on how chunky you like t) and added Veg broth to make a roasted veg soup !!! Nothing goes to waste !
I came upon your website by accident. It is wonderful. I have made both the blueberry and strawberry muffins and will be making the chewy oatmeal raisin cookies for a church luncheon next week. The secret you gave about stirring the muffin batter was great. My muffins are large. Can’t wait for other recipes.