Homemade Vegetable Stock Paste is so useful when it comes to cooking soups. It is so much healthier than store-bought stock cubes and it keeps in a fridge for 3-4 months.
Homemade Vegetable Stock Paste – Healthier Than Cubes Solution to Instant Stock
I like soups very much. They are – in general – healthy, low calorie and comforting. And everybody will find at least a few favourite ones as there are so many types of soups.
However, despite this huge variety, all of them have at least one common denominator – stock.
When you have time, you can prepare good quality stock earlier and then use it for your soups.
But what if you don’t have time? You can use stock cubes although this is certainly not the healthiest option. There are plenty of hydrogenated fats in them, which are dangerous for our health.
But luckily, if you get the ingredients (see below) and you have about an hour free, you can make your own ‘stock cubes’. Or rather Concentrated Vegetable Stock Paste that you can in a tight jar in a fridge for even a few months.
Concentrated Vegetable Stock Paste – Healthier than Stock Cubes
I have to confess that in the past when I was in a rush, I would have used stock cubes myself. I liked them for their immediacy and their taste.
So when I started making and using this Vegetable Stock Paste, the taste was my major issue: it was not bad, it was… unfamiliar!
There are various flavour enhancers included in industrially made stock cubes and obviously, I neither could nor would like to use them.
Therefore I decided to substitute them with a more natural one – soya sauce – that ads this desirable ‘pleasant savoury taste’ – umami.
I think the combination and proportions of ingredients work very well. Thanks to it, you will end up having a high quality, healthy and instant homemade concentrated stock paste.
And then nothing else should stop you from having soups more often 😉
Concentrated Vegetable Stock Paste
Agnieszka Weiner A recipe for a healthy, homemade stock paste that can be kept in the fridge for 3 -4 months.
Prep Time 10 minutes mins
Cook Time 50 minutes mins
Total Time 1 hour hr
- 250 g carrots peeled,
- 40 g parsnip peeled,
- 40 g celeriac peeled,
- 80 g leak
- 40 g cabbage
- 80 g onion peeled,
- 1 garlic clove peeled
- 140 g tomato
- 1 bay leaf
- 4 sprigs parsley
- 2 handfuls fresh herbs (leaves only from basil, sage, etc.),
- 200 g sea salt
- 35 g white wine
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 2 tbsp light soya sauce
- 50 g Parmesan cheese grated
Cut all the vegetables into pieces and put them in a kitchen processor; add the herbs and process till everything is almost liquidised.
Transfer to a heavy-bottomed pot, add the salt, wine, olive oil and soya sauce, stir and bring to boil on medium heat.
Decrease the temperature to low, cover the pot with a lid and cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Take off the lid and cook for 10 minutes more, remembering to stir now and then.
Increase the temperature to high and cook often stirring for 10 minutes (towards the end of the cooking time you may have to stir the mixture continuously to prevent it from burning). You want all the liquid to evaporate and end up as compact pulp.
Add the grated Parmesan cheese, stir and transfer everything to the processor; liquidise until everything is well combined.
Put the prepared pulp into sterilised jars and keep it in a fridge for up to 3-4 months.
To make stock use 1-1.5 tbsp for 0.5l of water.
Keyword concentrated vegetable stock paste, homemade vegetable stock paste, vegetable stock paste
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