I love to create edible art. That is a fancy way of saying I hardly ever use a recipe and some days the dogs get lucky and we go out to eat. I love to take different foods and put them together and out comes dinner. My goal is to get to the point where everything we eat starts as whole ingredients and nothing is processed outside of our house. I am happy to say that we are doing really well on it. Except for bouillon and I use a ton of it. I have set out to make my own homemade veggie bouillon. I use it in so often that when I cook a batch in my largest pot I have to make more every couple of months.
It is incredibly simple to make. Get your two largest stock pots out. Fill half way with water. Put it on the stove and have the stove on medium. Add veggies. It goes without saying that you should peel and wash the veggies before adding to the pot. Bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer. Cook until veggies are tender, adding water as needed. When the veggies are tender put in blender and puree then return to pot and continue simmering. What you are doing now is condensing the stock. By now everything should fit into one pot. Continue to simmer. Transfer to a lined dehydrator tray and transfer to the dehydrator. Dehydrate then put the mix back into the food processor and blend until you have small uniform sized granules. I took the extra step of sifting out the powder from the granules to have two options when cooking. Don’t forget to taste as you are cooking!
There is no right or wring way of doing this. All you are really doing is making a vegetable soup. To give you some ideas here are some ingredients I have used in the past.
Onion
Garlic
Almonds
Potatoes
Carrots
Mushrooms
Winter squash (various varieties)
Summer squash (various varieties)
Salt
Parsley
Spinach
Celery
Cabbage
Broccoli
Eggplant
Winter squash seeds (roasted)
Various seasoning
Eggs (leave out if you are vegan)
I have tried taking raw veggies and dehydrating them and them grinding them up and using those granules as a soup base. I am sad to say it did not work out like I had hoped. After dehydration the veggies were too hard to go through the food processors and it killed my first small food processor. The little bit I did get through the processor too a long time to cook up when added to boiling water. Instead of helping speed up cooking time, the meal took longer.
