Vegetable Stock

Vegetables, mingling before jumping in the pool

Over the course of my life, I’ve encountered my fair share of vegetarians. And the ones who I haven’t managed to fend off with a wooden spoon have since become my friends. As a result, I find myself cooking a whole lot more vegetarian food than I’m comfortable with, but one thing that helps make it less stressful is having a good base. Because, as anybody who’s ever been in any band ever can tell you, good bass is hard to find. (Get it? It’s a bad joke. Get used to it, because there are more coming) So here is the recipe for the vegetable stock that I use in….well, in most things. If it’s got the word vegetarian, or the name of any vegetable (or is the same color or shape as a vegetable, or made inappropriate jokes about somebody who had a horrible car crash and ended up as a vegetable [Oh, relax. It’s an inappropriate joke made at a fictional person’s expense]), chances are I use this stock in it. Did we all lose track of that last sentence? It was a doozy. I use this vegetable stock a lot. That was the gist. There, now we’re all caught up. Happy? Me neither.

Ingredients:

1 pound of Carrots

4 Ribs of Celery (for those unfamiliar, a “rib” of celery is the exact same thing as a stalk of celery. According to the most reliable unsourced quotes on the internet, originally the word “stalk” referred to the entire bunch of celery, and “rib” was each individual piece. But not anymore because language degrades, and nothing’s as good as it used to be, and get off my lawn you kids)

1 large onion

1 Parsnip

1 tsp Garlic Powder

1 tsp Dried Thyme

1 tsp Black Pepper

2 TBSP Salt

An unspecified amount of water

The first step is to prepare your vegetables. This is not complicated. It involves peeling the carrots, parsnip and onion, and also washing the celery. If you don’t know how to peel vegetables, here’s a handy guide:

1)Figure it out. It’s not rocket science

Chop the carrots, celery, parsnip and onion into large chunks. You’re going to be straining them out later, so you want easily identifiable bits. Especially if you don’t own a strainer, and you remove the vegetables by plunging your hands into the burning hot stock, and grabbing vegetable chunks. You know, like a man. 

Everything was going great at the veggie
hot tub until somebody invited a ladle

Place your chopped veggie carcasses into a pot along with all of the spices (that’s the garlic powder, thyme, pepper, and salt for those of you who just skimmed down to this paragraph for no reason). Put water in the pot until it’s about an inch higher than any of the vegetables. Place it on a high flame, uncovered, until it boils. Then lock that sucker down with a lid, and reduce the heat down to low. Let it sit for 45 minutes. Taste it, making sure the salt and pepper are to your liking. Adjust it because it’ll always be wrong. Then let it cool, and remove your dead veggies. And that’s it! Now, assuming you’ve been cooking along as you read this, you’ve got some quality vegetable stock! And that’s useful stuff. Honestly, just because it tastes good and is easier, I almost always replace chicken stock with this stuff. That’s the same reason I drink heavily instead of seeing a therapist. Also, it’s cheaper. In both cases!