Great soup stock is the key to a delicious soup. But what if you don’t have time to make enough stock? You can buy canned vegetable stock from the store, but that’s not always convenient. And even when you do manage to find a brand you like, it’s often full of preservatives and other additives that may not be good for your health or your family’s. You might even feel guilty for using it!
But if you’re looking for something more homemade, then we’ve got the perfect solution: our Vegetable Soup Stock Recipe at Home! With this recipe, you can make your own vegetable stock in just 20 minutes from beginning to end—and it tastes so much better than anything that comes out of a can!
We’ll teach you how to choose the right vegetables and how much water they need to cook down into delicious soup broth. Then we’ll show you how easy it is to make flavorful vegetable soup stock with just five ingredients: carrots, onion, garlic cloves (optional), celery stalks, and parsley stems (optional). The best part? All of these ingredients are available at most grocery stores!
Soup Stock
Equipment
- 1 Kettle
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp Saleratus
- 1/2 cup Cauliflower
Instructions
- The kettle in which the soup is cooked should be used for this purpose exclusively and he kept perfectly clean. The best are made of heavy tin or enameled ware, and have a tightly fitting cover.
- Dried pens, etc, can be softened by adding 1/2 to 1 teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda (or saleratus) while they are cooking it may be well to state, however, that this does not improve their flavor. The meat for soup stock must be fresh. The shinbone is generally used, but the joint and the neck or “sticking-piece,” as the butchers call it, contains more of the substance that you wish to extract, and makes a stronger and more nutritious soup than any other part of the animal However, nearly every kind of meat, such as mutton, veal, game or poultry, will make good soups of varying excellence.
- For invalids who may partake of easily digestible food only, soups made from poultry or veal are the best
- The meat from young animals will not make so strong a soup as that, from older.Where a strong; soup is wanted without reference to the juiciness of the meat, as in case of a dinner party where the soup meat is not brought to the table, take a piece of the Joint without bone or fats, and although this may, apparently, after having been used for the soup, be of little account, yet when chopped up With fat boiled ham or nice pork fat, it will make very palatable meat balls. If the meat is to be served after the soup, however, or as a side dish, it will be well to cut away all ragged peices and then cut it upo into smaller pieces, place it, covered with cold water, on the back of the stove for about 1 hour, bring to a boil and then add it to the soup when the larger begins to boil; whatever a soup made in thi manner lacks in strength, may be supplied by the addition of some extract of beef.
- Meats for soups should be washed very slighly and must not be laid in water, as this would tend to lessen their strength. Whenever possible, do not wash the meat at all, in any event it must not be kept in the water too long. When the meat is put on the fire, good judgement should be exercised as to the amount which will boil away and the quantity of the water first put into the kettle guaged accordingly; adding water after the soup is done is very determental.
- Should it have boiled away too much, however, then a little hot water may be added. Soup cooked over a charcoal or peat fire are the best. Inasmuch as soups require long cooking and lose in quantity even in a tightly covered kettle, it is easy to oversalt, and this circumstance must be taken into consideration when the salt is first put in. It is always easy to add more salt if needed, but over-salting is an indication of either negligence or ignorance
- If a good, clear, platable soup is wanted, a thorough skimming must not be neglected. At present many recommend that soup should not be skimmed, claiming that skimming weakness the soup. We cannot agree with this view, the albumen contained in the scum has but little nutritive value and a cloudy soup is not nearly so platable (which should be the principal feature of a good soup) as one that is quite clear. but the skimming should not be done too soon-not beforethe meat has slowely simmered for at least 1/2 hour. Throw in a tablespoonful of cold water, which will bring the scum the surface, when it should be immediately taken off.
- Be careful in cooking the soup to keep the kettle closely covered, in order not to lose the flavour of the juices, and keep it simmering slowely, but without ceasing, untill done, being careful to prevent boiling over. After cooking about 1 hour, take the precaution to pass the soup through a sieve, slightely rinse the meat to take off any which may adhere to it, and then place all back into the kettle( which has been cleaned in the meantime) and put on the fire again, having added the desired vegetables, etc