Taking stock

Stock cubes, bouillon powder, broth….it all makes water taste better.  We are devoted to adding it to practically everything. Soup (but of course!) but also to the water used to make rice and to boil potatoes in. It just makes everything tastes that little bit richer.

 

The downfalls are that stock cubes can be a pain to get to dissolve and sometimes you only want a bit of one and then you have all these partial cubes laying about. So we decided to go with a powder as it was more economical and you could just use what you needed. For years I bought Marigold brand bouillon powder.

Some had whey powder in them, but there were two types labelled vegan. The regular one we felt was a bit high in salt so I used to buy a small pot of the regular and a small pot of the low salt and mix them together. Perfect!

 

Except for one thing. They contained palm oil. Palm oil is one of those things that has gradually moved into our consciousness and set up house. We worry about the destruction of the rainforest that occurs due to palm oil production and the fact that it is destroying the habitat of orang-utans. Therefore we try to buy it as little as possible.

For a while I was buying these Knorr stock pots which I felt gave a really rich feeling to soups (probably due to the long list of fillers and artificial flavour enhancers), but they were made by Unilever and yet again, the ugliness crept into our hearts and we knew it would have to go the way of Marigold Bouillon. Unilever doesn’t have a very good track record on animal right’s issues--they are one of the leading companies who still use animal testing for their products. They are not the worst of the lot, but they are not the best either and our consciences  would not allow us to continue.

 

So what do you do? Make it yourself of course. This was a huge DUH! Moment for us--we make so many other things from scratch, why not this one?

 

I started with a google search. I came across many types, including one that pureed fresh vegetables and herbs with a huge amount of salt and then was frozen. The salt kept it from freezing solid, but I found it just lacked the depth of taste we were looking for and was way too salty. So into the bin that went.

 

Then I came across this one from Super Veggie Mom at http://superveggiemom.com/recipe/vegan/homemade-vegetable-broth-powder/  and it seemed just right. It looked just like the Marigold broth powder we loved (but without the palm oil) and I had nearly everything on hand. Plus it was lower in salt than any other recipe like it that I found. I liked also that she specified sea salt as I think sea salt has a much richer depth of flavour than table salt and so you get more flavour with less. I use Malden Sea Salt with the big flakes of salt.

 

So here goes. How to make your own homemade vegetable broth powder.

Ingredients:

  2 cups nutritional yeast

½ cup sea salt

2 TB onion powder (I used dehydrated onion flakes because that’s what we had)

1 TB turmeric

2 tsp dried dill weed

2 tsp marjoram (I used 2 tsp mixed herbs which has sage and marjoram in it)

2 tsp dried lemon peel (I left this out as I could not find it in the shops)

1 tsp celery seed

1 tsp basil

1 tsp thyme

1 TB dried parsley

1.Place all ingredients except parsley in a food processor in the listed order and blend until powdered together. 

2. Add parsley and pulse to blend

3. Store in an air tight container

 

4. To use--combine 1 tsp of powder with 1 cup water.

 

That’s it! I had it made in less than 10 minutes and that included clean up.

 

It tastes delicious--just as good as the commercial ones and possibly better as you know it is not full of fillers, palm oil, animal suffering and junk.

 

Look at the ones you buy and if you are shocked with the unpronounceable ingredients, palm oil or MSG then give this one a try.