Home-made vegetable stock

I've been making my own beef and chicken stocks for a while now, but still using bought vegetable stock, mostly for risotto if I don't have any home-made chicken stock to use.

In the UK I used the lovely Marigold boullion, but over here it is incredibly expensive and of course food miles heavy. Over the last couple of years I've mostly used Massel stock cubes, an Australian brand which seems fairly good quality and is gluten and lactose free. Last time I bought some it was $5.20 for a packet of ten cubes, so just over $2 to make risotto (for the stock part). I did wonder if I could do it for a better price at home, but since then I've been rethinking my whole attitude towards stocks and prices, or I think I have. It is 5.50am (only time I am awake without children it seems).

Packaging is fairly intense on stock cubes. Each individual Massel cube is wrapped in foil and then a cardboard packet on the outside. I imagine the packaging constitutes a major element of the price.

Ingredients in a Massel vegetable stock cube: marine salt, rice flour, palm shortening (non hydrogenated), sugar, yeast extract, dehydrated vegetables (onion, celery, garlic, spinach, bayleaf, parsley), vegetable flavours.

Hmmmm. I believe they are listed in descending order, largest ingredients first. So five major ingredients before we even get to vegetables. What is going on with 'vegetable flavours' at the end? That could be anything. I expect the palm shortening is to get it to cake, so I don't need to consider that in a comparison with home made liquid stock. I did think palm oil was a baddie due to the effect of growing it large scale in Indonesia, but am hazy on the details.

So rice flour is bulking it up but not adding to flavour. Salt, sugar and yeast extract are going to give a bit more flavour, but I could add them at home without paying 50+ cents per cube.

I don't have any difficulty getting a rich broth when I make stock with animal bones together with carrots, onions, celery and bay leaves. While I have 'recipes' to get a beginner started on such meat stocks in several recipe books, vegetable stock is barely if ever given a mention.

So I need to have a play around.

I also want to have a go at using onion weed as a food as Brigitte has suggested. It is all over our section, so no worries about finding enough. Then there is the lettuces in the garden, some gone to seed, which I want to use up, plus a mizuna plant that I pulled out to make way for an asparagus crown on Sunday.

Yesterday I washed and threw in my (10 litre I think) stock pot the mizuna, the lettuce, a parsley plant gone entirely to seed (I figure there must be flavour in the seeds), 3 bay leaves, three chopped carrots and two fat handfuls of onion weed. I cut the leaves off rather than pulling it up as it appeared to be the leaves Brigitte is using and it's faster that way than digging them up. I turned the element on very low (to simulate slow cooker conditions) but two hours later nothing much had happened so I turned it up, then off so I could use the element to cook dinner then finally on again. Not exactly getting pride of place in the kitchen order, but my experiment at least was happening. I put it on a medium boil meaning to adjust it down to a tiny simmer after the children were asleep. Except I fell asleep with them and woke up at 1.30am to find it had diminished by three quarters. Good job I woke up and turned it off so it didn't boil right down, burn until it caught fire and kill us in our sleep. I think I'll leave this story out next time we have a plunket visit.

I've tasted some just now and it is reasonable. I thought all the greenness might taste yuck, but it's okay. I'll use it a base for tonight's dinner. I will try onion weed again but not in stock.

I now want to work out an excellent vegetable stock recipe. Carrots, onions, celery, bay leaves. That part not difficult. But I think there must be a few other magic ingredients to make it sing and I'm after them! This time of year is a great one to work it out (I hope) as I have the chance to grow any recommended herbs or vegetables so I have all the ingredients to hand. I would love to read any suggestions here in the comments.