Day 27 - vegetable stock

As you have noticed, I often use (and is always good to do so in cooking) vegetable stock soup in my recipes. It's good to enrich flavors and add extra aroma to the dishes. Usually I use it when making some kind of soup, so it doesn't come out bland, but it's also good for sauces, risottos and similar.

That said, one should always have some stock at hand. The easiest way (and the one I usually go for due to lack of time) is store-bought, but always make sure it doesn't contain animal products.

The other way is to make your own stock and store it for future use - like freeze in ice-cubes, which are always handy and ready-to-use (you just throw a stock-cube in the risotto and let it melt).

Actually, before going vegan I only knew how to make beef of chicken stock. Knowing it takes a lot of cooking time (and well, animal products), I never gave it a go on my own.

Then I found an easy-peasy vegan recipe and - hop it went into the pot. The beauty of this is (besides not having animal products), that it only takes like 30 minutes and you've got your own soup.

VEGETABLE STOCK
makes: cca. 2 litres

1 large onion
2-3 cloves garlic
1 medium leek
2-4 carrots
2 celery stems (leaves and all)
a bunch of parsley
salt, pepper
spices to taste
2 l water (or more)

First thing first. Wash your veggies, always. Then, coarsely chop them - don't bother too much, you'll be draining the soup afterwards.

In a pan, heat a sprinkle of olive oil and saute the veggies (or if you prefer, just steam in a bit of water).

Then, add the veggies to a large pot, cover with water, season to taste, bring to boil and then cook for about 30 minutes on low heath until the veggies turn soft and the soup a beautiful color. If your soup is too strong, just dilute with more water.

Remove the veggies and drain them. Compost veggies and serve the soup :)
I threw in there some soup pasta and slices of the cooked carrots.