Homemade Vegetable Stock

It's Day 2 of my canning and sharing posts.  This time I wanted to make some vegetable stock.  

I came home with the tomatoes and peppers from Market on the Move.  

This recipe is amazing and I will definitely be making it more often.  

What's better than your own stock when you know exactly what is in it?  

And since I tried it in my favorite Artisan Bread, I'm definitely going to run out quick.  

More on that at the end of the post.

I have been pondering what the best approach would be to my food storage.  

Freeze dried and Dehydrated is sure the rage right now.  

And while I'm not discounting it at all, I live in Arizona. 

 What's the big deal with that you might ask?  

Well water is a precious comodity here.  

If you live in a place where that's not the case, this philosophy might not apply to you.  

But for us desert dwellers, water is all to precious.  

We are encouraged to store water, and I am doing that. 

But if water becomes scarce, 

I think I would rather use my precious water for 

drinking and washing, rather than reconstituting my food.  

This is why I bottle so much of what I store.  

The liquid is already there and I don't have to dip into my reserves to be able to eat what I've stored.  

Make sense?  Well maybe just to me.  But lets get to making some stock.

Vegetable Stock

Gather your vegetables.  You will need the following:

1 pound of carrots, washed and cut into 1 inch pieces

6 stalks celery, cut into 1 inch pieces

2-3 medium onions chopped

2 red sweet peppers, seeded and chopped

2-3 tomatoes, seeded and diced

3-4 cloves garlic, sliced

3 bay leaves

1 tsp dried basil

2-3 dried basil leaves

8 peppercorns

Place all veggies and herbs in a large stockpot and fill with water, about 6-7 quarts.

Bring to a boil.

Cover and reduce heat to a simmer for 2 hours.

Remove cover and continue simmering for 4-6 hours.

You could also do this in the crock pot.  

Cover for the first 2 hours on high, then lift the lid with knives laid across the top, 

and cook on low for 4-6 hours.

After the vegetables have cooked and the liquid reduced down, remove the bay and whole basil leaves,
then puree the mixture in your blender until smooth.

Strain through a wire mesh strainer.  Reserve the solids.  You can strain it again through cheese cloth if you want a thinner consistency.  I liked mine with a slight texture, so I only strained it once.

This is what I strained off.  I put it in the fridge in a sealed container to use when I make my garden breadsticks.

Ladle into prepared jars.  I know these are sweet potatoes, but I forgot to take a picture of the stock in the pressure canner.  Make sure the jars are covered with water and pressure at 10 lbs of pressure 30 minutes for pints, 35 minutes for quarts.  I'm using my Presto Pressure canner.  You can find them on my sidebar. 

 Let the pressure drop naturally.  Remove from canner and let sit for 24 hours on the counter.

Beautiful.

I scored with about 2 cups of stock left over that I didn't bottle.  I wanted to try it in my Artisan Bread.  I substituted 2 cups stock for water in the recipe and added 1 cup water to bring it to 3 cups liquid.  The bread was super moist and super yummy.  I like the slight orange-y tint to the bread, and the kids had no idea I snuck a whole bunch of veggies into their bread.  Love it!

 I just finished my piece of bread for lunch today.  I think it's almost better the second day.  Yummm...

Tomorrow it's sweet potatoes.  Be sure to come back!