Rich & Flavorful Vegetable Stock from Scratch!

What's going on everybody? Now listen, after looking at the title, you know what I mean? And then you probably saw that thumbnail. Listen, today we finna learn how to make a vegetable. I gotta say it like slow. There's some reason that it's tough for me to pronounce it, but it's a vegetable stock, right? So listen, I guess about a few months ago, like usually around the holidays, I usually put in how to do like a chicken stock, but this time we're gonna do a vegetable stock, right? Now I'm gonna show you this. I know we a little bit past like the soup season, you know what I mean? But those of you guys that do like them Southern dishes and do something like Southern stewed okra and tomatoes or something like that, then you're gonna want to have this in your arsenal, right? Anyway, one of the things is about making this yourself, you don't have to worry about it having any of the additives in it, because what you see and what you put in there is what you get, right? And guess what folks, we can control the sodium. With that being said, let's go over some of these ingredients. We're gonna control this, which is our sodium. This is my kosher salt, it's up to you guys. I suggest you give it at least a pinch. What sodium does is, or the salt, what it does is like enhance the flavor of what you have. Whether you put it in now, cook with it later, and then make your adjustments, you control all of that, right? So going over the first thing, look, for the flavor, we're gonna go with the black peppercorns, right? That's the same thing that I put right inside of this right here. This is when I say I want to grind that fresh black crack, this is it right here. Just in case you guys didn't know, right? We got bay leaves, we already talked about the sodium, you know I use the kosher, right? Over here we got parsley. Look at this, stems and all. This is where we gonna get that flavor from. See these right here? These are my yellow onions. We gonna work, cut these down, I'll probably quarter these, put those in the inside. We got celery, thyme, and here's something that you guys probably don't think about, and that's like putting some type of sauce. I'm not even sure if this is a vegetable or not, and believe me, I gotta like look it up myself. Right, but we wanna put the mushroom, with the flavor that it puts in there. It's really the combination how it all marries together that does what it does, right? Then everybody know you gotta have the carrots in there. We got a little extra virgin olive oil we gonna put in there. And here's something that's kinda like new to my channel. I really don't cook a lot with it, and that's these leeks, right? Make sure you guys clean these leeks. Even though I get them from the big main grocery store, look, after you peel some of these layers back, they be having all kind of grind. You might even find, you know, some bugs. So listen, you gotta go ahead and clean these. That's why I peeled these off right now so you guys can see. And we gonna use the white and the green, right? Look, we got garlic cloves. Oh, what else we got here? Did I mention the celery? You know, celery goes in just about everything that you know you're trying to create that flavor, right? I got some water right here. Now we can talk about the containers or how we gonna do it, but I just wanna go ahead and get it started. Just show you guys how I prep it. You know, just go from there. Super easy. Look, we already did chicken stock. Now we doing vegetable stock. You know what I mean? And talk to me, oh, we gotta do seafood stock. I hope you guys been saving your shells from their shrimp. What I'm doing now is I'm going and eating this up. You know what I mean? This is my Dutch oven. This'll be my tool of choice this time, right? So look, I put a medium flame under here. I'm gonna hit it with this, you know, extra virgin olive oil, right? Don't forget, this is garlic infused. You know what I mean? I know some of you guys are probably trying to think like, why would he be putting that in the broth? It'll make sense to you now because I'm gonna put garlic, you know, celery, onions and cook them down and get them going and get them to release some flavors prior to us getting it in here and boiling it, right? So while that's coming up to temp, I'm gonna go ahead and take my garlic. And you can see I got a little bit of garlic. And don't forget, the full ingredient list is on my website. That's smokingandgrillingwithab.com and that's W-I-T-A-B.com, right? So I'm taking whole cloves, taking my knife on the flat side. I'm just opening this up. It makes a little bit of a wet stain that's on top of my, what is this, on top of my cutting board. And when I see that, that's why I don't wanna push it down too hard, right? We just go ahead, break them open. You know what I mean? It just helps it put that garlic flavor in there. And don't forget, we started with some garlic-infused olive oil, right? So obviously, we're looking for that profile, right? So, ooh, you can smell it. Gotta love working with garlic. You know, back in California, they got a place called The Stinking Road. You guys look that up. I don't know if they're still in business or not, but that used to be the place we'd go when I was younger. Everything was heavy on the garlic. And we'd pull it up into the valet. You know, we young, trying to do way too much, getting valeted, all that kind of stuff. You know what I mean? When you pull up, you know you there. Remember, called The Stinking Road. I'm gonna lift them up. They might have one of them out here in Vegas. And then I'm on a small flame, a little bit below medium. You know what I mean? Just trying to keep it, ah, yeah. That really kicked it up a little bit. But there we go. Right, so now I'm getting ready to take my onions. Let me go ahead and cut this, the root part out, the top. Now, notice what I do right here. You guys can see, I cut it down here. Cut it into quarters, right? And then these are kind of big. I still like to take this little green out. I mean, I guess it really doesn't make that much of a difference right here because we making a stock, right? But I just don't want to see it. And I'm gonna take these, and then I'm gonna cut that like that, right? Then we put it in here. What we're doing is getting it to like release, sweat it down a little bit, but everything stays in the enzyme, right? So you just want to move it around, keep it coated. Usually, you guys see me take this. I told you my grandma taught me, even whatever I'm making, when I'm using celery, this is where a lot of the flavor comes from, too. When you're making your stock, you want to keep the little leafy green on the top, right? So these have already been cut and washed. Obviously, they're not gonna hold, you know, stock. No, so I'm just gonna cut this like this. You just want them to get a little bit on the steamy side. Let those work, and then these, I'm gonna dice these down just a little bit, all right? So it's up to you guys how you want to do it. All right, and I'm not gonna dice these, like dice them like that. It'd be more of a chop, but we just want to get these a little bit, a little smaller. These are gonna get down there on the bottom and hit that heat for sure. Now we're working, folks. Remember, we're creating our own flavor profile. Anytime you feel like it might be a little bit on the dry side, which it shouldn't be, because heat and veggies, seeing how veggies is probably 80% water anyway, but you can always add yourself a little bit more, you know, your oil. So now we're gonna add the carrots. Again, everything had already been washed and all that, you know, prior to, so I'm gonna go ahead and cut these down into about, well, about one ounce piece. I mean, excuse me, one inch pieces. You know what I mean? The back end of it, I chopped that one in half. Look, we'll just drop that in here too. You guys see where we're going with it though, right? All right, so the next thing we're getting ready to do, just give it a little stir. We got to give the carrots a little time to get that meat to heat also. But you, I'm sure, I want you guys to let me know down in the comment section below, what would you guys do? You know what I mean? What would you add to any other kind of ingredients you would like to put in your vegetable stock also? You know what I mean? That's what this is about. You know what I mean? And then if you make enough of this, you know what I mean? And you can it properly, then this can last you and get you through like all the way up to the fall. So now let's talk about these leeks. Like I said, I done already cleaned these and did everything to them, right? When it come to these leeks, it all going in there. Some people say when you do this, you're supposed to do like the light green and the white, but you know what? I'm finna put it all in the inside. So there it is. That's that one. And then I wanna get some of this too, right? So let me clean this up down here. You know what? Because we making this, I probably could have went ahead and used the root part too. Listen, that's all of the flavor. You know what I mean? It's some part of the profile anyway. And you can look at it. If I bring you guys in here and you look, look how solid that is. But you see how wet that is? I tell you, vegetables are really, really, truly a lot of, let's just say it's a lot of water. You know what I mean? But that's a flavor of water that it is. And when you break it down, look how it comes aloof like an accordion. Look, you see that right there? You see all the different layers? That's what you wanna get in. Remember, we making it at home, folks. And again, I'm gonna be reading these comments because I wanna know, what would you guys do? You know, what would you put in yours that I didn't put in this one right here? Go ahead and add just a little bit of water down here like this. You don't have to add much, but I don't know if my mic is picking it up, but you hear it, it start rolling immediately. It's nice and hot down there. Now let's start getting these to start cooking down, right? We done already sweated down them onions, but we done put them leeks in there too. So nothing wrong with having a little bit of that steam. Look at these, right? These are my mushrooms. Now these, keep it simple, folks. Quarters, look at that. You got four pieces, drop them in. I'm gonna give it one last stir once I get all of these in here, one last mix. Then we get ready to add everything else, but we want to get this water up to a boil. I'm gonna add two pinches of salt. I like to have it, taste it, and then whatever dish I'm making, I make my adjustments then. But right now I know I just put two teaspoons in there. On the recipe, I'll probably have something that'll say something like a teaspoon of salt. But for as much as, I'm getting ready to put eight cups of water in here. So I'm gonna render a lot of vegetable stock, right? But for just to have a teaspoon in there, that's cool, but I make mine a little bit even less than that. All of my folks is out here just watching our intake, right? Now we add our water. Make sure you're on high so they can hurry up and come back to a boil. Now, while that's getting ready to come back up, now I'm gonna add this. That's my thyme, my parsley. I'm gonna wait on my baby. We're not gonna worry about that. Then we're gonna add our peppercorn in there. Now that we come up to a boil, right? Once you start changing that color, it'll let me know it's releasing all of this flavor in the inside. Now I'm gonna add here my bay leaves. We're gonna let it go ahead and boil for at least, I'm gonna just say one hour. That's good though. At a rolling boil like this, we're not finna put no top on it or anything. We're just gonna let this work and let this break down. You know, you're gonna lose some to evaporation, but there's no problem. I'm gonna go ahead and really set this to a simmer and I'll see you guys in one hour. All right, it's been one hour, right? So if you guys come in here and take a look at it, you can see a lot of this is broken down. Look at this right here. Look how soft this is. With a boil like that, I mean, when I say soft, I mean soft. Now what you're gonna need is, you're gonna need some type of like spider. I take this and just make sure I mash this down because we wanna get as much of the flavor in here as possible. All right, so I got most of the big stuff out of here. You know what I mean? Again, the spider does, you know, most of the work. I want you guys to come in here and look right here. Can you guys see the oil that's on the top of there? Now we have two choices, right? I'm gonna put all this into the blow off, right? I can put this in the refrigerator, let it cool, then put it in the refrigerator. Let it stay in there overnight and it's gonna form like a little oily, you know, a little film on the top. Then tomorrow we can just like take it and get it off. Or I can take a spoon now, right? I'll just grab one of these and I can try to, you know, look at how when I do it. You'll see it kind of like just chasing around. See that top piece? That's cause it's starting to cool. You see that right there? Look. I got this thing, like this right here is really like the flavor for myself. You see it on there? I like to leave that. Now you guys let me know down in the comment section below. Are you the ones that wanna, you know, scam everything? Now, you take this and I'm gonna go ahead and pour. I'll let this cool for about 20 minutes, you know what I mean? It's still a little bit, a little warm, you know what I mean? But what I'm gonna do is I got these right here. I keep these, I know some of you guys will probably have Tupperware or something like that. You know what I mean? But I like to have these at the ready. Go ahead and hit it with your ladle. I got the pour spouts over here on this side and let's go ahead and get this going. I mean, this is just the gist of it. You know what I mean? It's really about the profile that you guys are trying to get. You can look at this right now and then for those of you guys that know what usually what you buy, it's never this dark. You know what I mean? This right here is full of a whole lot of flavor. Hey, with that being said, you guys let me know again down in the comment section below what do you think that I could have put in here that would have made this a little bit better? You know what I mean? I'm gonna write with a Sharpie on here. Go ahead and date them. Now, I want you guys to let me know down in the comment section below. If you like this type of content, let me know. You know what I mean? There's so many other things we can do that enhance our cooking experience, right? And especially when we make everything from scratch. You know, for those of us that got the time, let's do it. Now, if you're new to this channel, let me take this time to say, thank you for watching this video. Don't forget to like, smash that subscribe button and tell everybody out there. There's a channel out here that's simplifying these recipes and taking the mystery out of cooking. Peace.