Homemade Vegetable Bullion

Looking for a homemade, easy, vegetarian way to flavor soups, broths and more? This homemade vegetable bullion is delicious and easy to make and have on hand whenever you need it! 

 

We are big fans of soup in our family.

Most of the time if I’m cooking rice, or quinoa, or noodles I like to throw them in broth for a little extra flavor.

Before becoming a vegetarian I kept chicken bullion cubes or granules in my pantry almost all the time. That way if I ran out of chicken stock I had an easy alternative.

Well besides being chicken, store-bought bullion is sometimes filled with some yucky ingredients like MSG (although if you look hard enough you can find some that’s a little less yucky.) However, no matter how hard I looked I couldn’t find a vegetable bullion.

It is pretty easy to find vegetable stock and most of it is pretty tasty, but I still wanted something to have in the pantry for those times when I’ve run out or am throwing something together at the last minute.

So I made this homemade vegetable bullion, and it’s exactly what I needed!

It is a little time consuming, but most of the time it takes is inactive, you’re just letting it hang out. You can even do the part in the oven over night. It’s totally worth it to have a handy ingredient that you know what is in it.

Here’s what you’ll need for this homemade vegetable bullion –

2- Carrots

2- Stalks of Celery

1- Med. Onion

1- tsp. (approx 2 cloves) Chopped Garlic

1/2 tsp Dried Thyme

1/2 tsp Dried crushed Rosemary

1/3- Cup Salt

 

The first thing you’re going to do is finely chop your vegetables. You want to dice them nice and small, especially the carrots! Once you have everything chopped put it in a skillet and top with the salt.

Yes it is a lot of salt. What we’re making here is concentrated, if you’ve ever used store bought bullion you know that the salt content is pretty high!

 

Turn your burner on low and stir the salt and veggies together.  Now you’re going to let that sit for 1-2 hours. This is one of the points where you can go find something else to do. You’ll just have to check this every once in a while. So go check Facebook, dye your hair, do some laundry… Every 15 minutes or so check on it.

Eventually the juices will all cook out, it will look like this.

Once it gets to that point you’ll need to keep cooking it. Once all the juice is out, it will all get absorbed. You’ll know it’s ready when the juice is all gone and it looks like cooked veggies covered in salt.

 

Now heat your oven up to 170 and spread your veggies on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Pop it in the oven.

Here’s where you get to wait again. You can even do this overnight if you’re ok with leaving your oven on.  It needs to stay in there for 8-12 hours.

How long it takes depends on how small your pieces are and how much liquid cooked out on the stove. You are in essence dehydrating the vegetables. You’ll know they’re done when they feel dry and are crunchy.

 

Let it cool and then you’re going to grind it up in a food processor. Grind it until everything is nicely incorporated and pretty uniform in size. Nice little granules.

 

You’re all done! To use add 1/4- 1/2 tsp to a cup of hot water. Or dissolve in soups, stews etc.

 

What is you go to for soups? Do you make your own stock, or buy store bought? What will you make with this homemade vegetable bullion?