Vegetable Stock Concentrate and Powder

I have finally gotten around to making vegetable stock concentrate.  My friends have all done it – Frilly Pants and Rona in the Thermomix and Trish without.  I’ve never bothered before because we have a second fridge with a big freezer so the liquid kind has always suited.  But that may be coming to an end soon – we are hoping to knock down our house and build a new one, which means moving out into a small unit and leaving the second fridge in storage.  Rather than just copy my friends’ recipes I did a bit of research andwhile I was at it found a recipe to make powdered vegetable stock – even better!  The powdered stock worked a treat, although it wasn’t quite as strong in flavour as the concentrate (which means I would use more to make a cup of stock this way), but it did reduce down from 250g of vegetables to 80ml of powder in a small zip lock bag.  And for the purposes of scientific research I made up a cup of both to compare.  The flavour was similar, but the colour and consistency  is quite different.

The vegetable stock can be made with any tolerated vegetables.  We can tolerate moderate salicylates; so I used carrot, parsnip, sweet potato, zucchini, celery and parsley in my version – which is orangey-brown in colour.  If you are looking for some ideas on how to do it with Failsafe / Low Chemical vegetables, have a look at:

• Domestic Diva’s Vegetable Stock Concentrate
• Failsafe Foodie’s Vegetable Stock Concentrate
• Real Meals Vegetable Stock Concentrate