Tessa Kiros

Vegetable Broth

Preparation info

  • Difficulty

    Easy

  • Makes

    2 litres

Appears in

Apples for Jam

Apples for Jam

By Tessa Kiros

Published 2010

This is so quick and easy and is, I feel, an essential dish when you’re cooking for children. It can be used for cooking a white risotto, a ladleful will add depth to a casserole or stew, or it can just be drunk from a cup. You can add anything you fancy to flavour this broth in another way. Sometimes I put in a piece of red pepper, just for extra and new vitamins. And you could add some stronger herbs — a bay leaf or some basil. Make sure your vegetables are top quality though, not those that are leftover and exhausted in the bottom of the fridge.

Ingredients

  • 3 carrots, peeled and halved
  • 2 zucchini (courgettes)
  • 2 spring onions (scallions), trimmed
  • 2 leafy inner celery stalks
  • 3 ripe cherry tomatoes, halved
  • 2 garlic cloves, peeled but left whole
  • a small handful of parsley
  • 7 peppercorns

Method

Put all the ingredients in a very large pan with 1 teaspoon of salt and 2.5 litres(87 fl oz/10 cups) of cold water. Bring to the boil and then lower the heat to simmer. Put the lid on the pan and continue cooking for about 1½ hours, until the vegetables have surrendered all their goodness and flavour into the broth. Taste for salt and add more if necessary.

Strain through muslin or a fine sieve. (Don’t throw the vegetables away; someone might like to eat them with a little olive oil and a few slices of leftover roast.) The broth will keep in the fridge for a couple of days and can also be frozen.

© 2010 All rights reserved. Published by Murdoch Books.