Home Made Veggie Bouillon

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. 

Winter Squash

Last week I bought 30 pounds of various varieties of winter squash. It is 2lbs for a dollar for the locally grown squash and I am buying now before the price goes up. I cut them in half, remove and put aside the seeds then bake at 350 for 45 minutes or until tender. I scoop out the tender flesh and dehydrate it. I then throw it into my food processor and powder it. I store it away for winter and use it as a soup base on cold winter days or I rehydrate it on the stove with a small amount of butter and honey for a tasty treat.

I really do not like to waste anything and it really bothered me to throw out the seeds. I did a quick search and found that they are edible! So I tossed the seeds with olive oil and salt and baked at 350 until they were starting to brown and pop. Yum! And so much better then pumpkins seeds.

The only disadvantage was that the jar I had set aside to store the seeds wasn’t big enough to hold all those seeds. I did not want to waste the seeds so I tossed a handful into my food processor and I mixed it in with my veggie bouillon powder and wow what a flavor! The only thing needed is more onion and that is only because I enjoy a large amount of onion in my bouillon.

This year’s varieties are:
Acorn Squash
Buttercup Squash
Butternut Squash
Delicata Squash
Carnival Squash
Kabocha Squash
Sweet Dumpling Squash

Food Solutions

I am passionate about creating unique recipes and having healthy foods to eat and saving money. Due to our budget limitations I cannot afford to have local, fresh, organic produce year round.

My solution? Buy in bulk when the prices are low and the crops are abundant to preserve for when prices are sky high or the food is unavailable. I primarily dehydrate and freeze the food. I would like to learn how to can but for right now dehydrating and freezing more then serve the purpose.

While buying large quantities is a great solution it does not satisfy my desire to have a large variety of fruits and vegetables in our diet. Even now with more and more heirloom varieties being grown and sold at the markets and stores I still am left wondering where I can find more varieties. Every few years I get lucky and find purple carrots but generally I am limited to 3-4 carrots and then only if I buy everything in the store.

My solution? Learning to grow our own food. This past year I started gardening with a friend. I am happy to say that we had a successful harvest. The fruits of our labor were not all edible and a good portion of what we reaped was in knowledge rather then edibles but that was just fine with us. We now know what to do and, more importantly, what not to do next year.

The colors of our carrot harvest.