Vegetable Broth (p. 107)

There's a couple yummy looking soups I want to make soon but most of them call for vegetable broth, so it was time to try out the recipe and have some homemade broth on hand.

To start I roasted veggies -- quartered onions, chunks of celery stalks, and slightly crushed garlic cloves were doused in some olive oil and put in a hot oven.

I added quartered fresh mushrooms after about 15 minutes and then continued cooking. The veggies are dumped in a stock pot and the recipe calls for wine to be added to the glass oven dish and cooked over the stove top until the wine reduces.  Remembering the time my beautiful oven dish cracked while being used on the stove top I skipped this step and added the wine directly to the stock pot. I can't afford to lose any more oven-proof dishes.

I added a lot of hot water as well as a chopped fennel bulb, dried thyme, and a cinnamon stick, and let the stock simmer over medium heat.

I meanwhile soaked dried porcini mushrooms in very hot water for about 15 minutes and then added those, coarsely chopped, to the stock pot, along with the water that they had soaked in (after it was strained.)

Once the broth finished cooking (about an hour),  I strained it through a paper towel-lined colander with a bowl underneath. The veggies and any grit were discarded and the broth remained! It's in a couple of jars in my fridge waiting to be used up.

fresh mushrooms -- $.14

fennel -- $1.99

onions -- $2.34

dried mushrooms -- $2.49 (3/4 of the bag is left)

Total Cost of Vegetable Broth: $6.96