How to Make Scrap Vegetable Broth

If you were following the blog last week, you may have caught several mentions to “Scrap Vegetable Broth.” I suggested putting any vegetable scraps from your Thanksgiving cooking into a container or paper bag in your freezer so that you could make homemade broth later. Now that Thanksgiving is behind us and we are already into December, I wanted to provide a bit more information on this practice. After all, we have officially entered Soup Season, and nothing takes your soup to the next level like fresh broth.

What Makes Scrap Vegetable Broth Revolutionary?

1. Reducing Food Waste. Globally, we waste about one third of our food every year, or 1.3 billion tonnes (Source). This is pretty inexcusable when we think about the fact that 820 million people in the world are chronically undernourished (Source). Food loss and waste also amount to a major waste of other resources, including water, land, energy, labor, and capital (Source). It also means that we produce needless greenhouse gas emissions to grow and transport food we never eat.

Of the food we waste, 40-50% is made up of root crops, fruits and vegetables. We compost all food waste in our house, but even composting means that we didn’t really utilize what was grown for consumption. So I started throwing all our vegetable and herb scraps and leftovers in the freezer to make Vegetable Scrap Broth.

2. Reducing Packaging. In addition to reducing food waste, Scrap Vegetable Broth reduces packaging. Most broths are either canned or in TetraPaks. Cans are usually lined with some kind of plastic and TetraPaks are always lined in plastic. This makes the recycling process for these products more difficult, and often these items aren’t getting recycled anyway (Source). Beyond the environmental impacts of lining our packages with plastic, there are potential health impacts, even when the product is “BPA-Free” (Source).

How to Make Scrap Vegetable Broth

To make Scrap Vegetable Broth, you need to start by collecting scraps of your vegetables and herbs. I freeze scraps in either large glass jars or a large paper bag.

To start your scrap collection, just throw anything in there that hasn’t gone bad. You don’t want to include anything that is starting to rot. You can throw in onion peels, carrot tops, celery bottoms and tops, potato skins, garlic pieces, leftover herbs, etc. There are some items that might impart a bitter taste, like carrot greens or broccoli stems. I still use these but just make sure each batch of broth includes a limited amount.

Once you get several cups of scraps, you can make Scrap Vegetable Broth by placing the scraps in a pot, covering with water, and simmering for 30 minutes to one hour. I put my vegetables into a pasta strainer before putting them in the pot so that I can easily remove the cooked vegetables once the broth is done. You can also simply strain out the scraps after everything boils. The result is fresh, homemade vegetable broth that is fresh and delicious.

You can use your fresh broth right away or you can store it in the fridge for one week or the freezer for a couple months. I freeze mine in glass jars, which is possible as long as you don’t overfill them. The key is to make sure you keep the broth below the “shoulder” of the jar.

I hope you enjoy this recipe!