Homemade stock powder is so much more than the sum of it’s parts! Veggie scraps, herbs, salt and spices come together to make a delicious preserve.
Making homemade stock powder is really simple. You can adjust the flavours to your taste or to what you have in abundance in your garden.
This simple vegetable stock is made using cooking offcuts and garden grown veggies that are past their prime. Has your celery gone stalky? Are your carrots woody? Have your leeks gone to seed? No problems! Homemade stock powder turns these harvest problems into a delicious solution.
That’s because texture is completely unimportant when making vegetable stock. The most important thing is flavour.
Basic homemade stock:
- 100g dried vegetable scraps (you should include leeks or onions, carrots or parsnips, celery or fennel or a mix of all these flavour essentials)
- 50g salt
- 10g turmeric powder
Step one: prepare dried vegetables
When making this stock you can use cooking offcuts like celery and leek tops, carrot tops and tails or fennel stalks.
Woody vegetables that are no good for cooking fresh can also be used too. Chop into small pieces. Dehydrate until hard. You can use a dehydrator, oven on low or leave in the sun to dry.
Step two: grind
Ensure vegetables are really hard and dry before grinding. You can grind them in a stone grain mill, spice mill or coffee grinder. Work from the coarsest setting to the finest to ensure you don’t jam your mill up.
You can add salt around half way through, it will help keep the mix loose. Don’t add turmeric to your mill (unless you want everything else you grind to turn yellow).
Step three: add turmeric
This is largely to give your mix a pleasant colour (dried veggies tend to look a little grey). But feel free to skip this if it’s not important to you.
Other flavour ideas:
Pho style: add star anise and black cardamom.
Japanese: add dried shiitake mushrooms and kombu.
Herbal: add lashings of dried tarragon, parsley, basil, oregano, sage and thyme.
You can really go wild experimenting with flavours when making homemade stock, so don’t be afraid to add what you have or what you fancy. Bottle your stock powder and store in a cool dry place. It makes a great gift.