Heston Blumenthal Vegetable Broth

This vegetable broth is used to make mushroom soup, but it’s also great for other soups. You can use it to make risotto, and in other recipes, replacing chicken broth if necessary. The broth is very rich and flavorful, and definitely worth your while. Especially if you prefer vegetable broths to meat broths.

I got the recipe from Heston Blumenthal At Home, where Heston recommends cooking it in a pressure cooker. In the recipe for basic chicken broth, I’ve already talked about why the pressure cooker is the perfect tool for making broth, but I’ll say it again. Because of the increased pressure, the boiling point of the water rises. This allows you to get more flavor components out in a shorter amount of time. In addition, due to hermeticity, the liquid does not evaporate, which means that some of the flavor and aroma does not escape into the air. Another advantage of non-evaporation is that as much water as you pour into the pressure cooker, you get almost as much as you get out.

Now that you know all the advantages of making broth in a pressure cooker, let’s move on to the disadvantages. There’s only one: you have to have a pressure cooker. It turns out that the main disadvantage of the pressure cooker is the lack of it in the house. In my case, this disadvantage is the main reason why, this time, I am cooking vegetable broth in a regular pot.

Ingredients

For 2 liters of broth:

(the exact weight of peeled and sliced food is given)

• 50 g (1,8 oz) unsalted butter
• 350 leeks (12 oz) (~1 large stem)
• 225 g (8 oz) carrots (~2 carrots)
• 200 g (7 oz) onions (~2 onions
• 200 g (7 oz) champignons
• 100 g (3,5 oz) fennel
• 100 g (3,5 oz) celery (~2-3 stalks)
• 3 sprigs of thyme (1/2 tsp. dried thyme)
• 3 bay leaves
• 30 g (1,1 oz) parsley

Step by step Directions

⏱ Cooking time — 100 minutes overall.

Includes 15 minutes of preparation and 85 minutes unattended.

Peel the carrots and onions.

Slice the onion in thin half rings, carrots also in thin half rings or circles.

Finely chop the celery stalk, mushrooms and fennel. Set aside with the onions and carrots.

Cut the leeks in half. Cut each piece lengthwise down the middle and rinse under cold water. Rinse thoroughly between each leaf – there may be soil and dirt. Remove the top leaves, this is not necessary, but they usually don’t have the best look.

After that, thinly slice leeks.

In a large saucepan (or pressure cooker) over medium heat, melt 50 grams (1,8 oz) of butter.

Add all the vegetables and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes.

Add the thyme and bay leaf and pour in 2 liters of cold water.

If using a pressure cooker, close with the lid on, bring to maximum pressure and cook for 20 minutes.

If, like me, you cook the broth in a pot – bring it to a boil, cover with a lid, reduce the heat to low and leave on low heat for 1 hour.

Pressure cooker: Remove from heat and allow to cool completely before removing the lid. Remove the lid and place over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add the parsley, turn off the heat and cool for 20 minutes.

Pot: add the parsley, cook for another 5 minutes, then turn off the heat and cool for 20 minutes.

Next, Heston suggests filtering the broth through a sieve lined and folded in two layers with wet gauze. This will give you a more transparent broth, but I did not bother. I just filtered the vegetable mixture through a sieve.

Put in the refrigerator or freeze for later use.