Recipe & Ingredients for BRILLIANT BOUILLON
Makes 2/3 cup base, enough for 36 cups of broth
There’s no substitute for a slowly simmered homemade stock for adding extra oomph to soups and sauces, but sometimes there’s no time for that - not even in my household, where I pride myself on making just about everything from scratch. One time, when I ran out of my favorite organic veggie base, I concocted my own. Whipped up in just a couple of minutes, it is truly instant – instant to make, and instant to use! And it’s much cheaper, more flavorful, and less salty than the packaged variety, yielding a soothing cup of warm broth tasty enough to drink on its own or with just a couple of veggies thrown in. Make a jar of this and keep it in your cupboard – you’ll find endless uses for it from soups and sauces to adding a little extra umami to casseroles, stir-fry, grains, and beans.
1/2 cup nutritional yeast flakes
1/4 cup porcini mushroom powder or 6 tablespoons shiitake mushroom powder (see sidebar)
1/4 cup light miso
1/4 cup oil (canola or other neutral oil)
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon ground celery seed
2 teaspoons sea salt
Combine all of the ingredients in a bowl mix by hand with a wooden spoon, or process in a food processor to form a paste. Store in a jar in the pantry.
Tomato Flavored Veggie Base
This is good for minestrone and other soups where a hint of tomato is desired. Make the soup base above in the food processor. Add a half-cup of sun-dried tomatoes –reconstituted, oil-packed, or if you can find them, dried ones that are soft and need not be soaked to be able to eat. Process until a relatively smooth paste is formed.
Chickenless Veggie Base
Increase the nutritional yeast by two tablespoons, use shiitake powder instead of porcini, and add 1 tablespoon poultry seasoning.
Sidebar
To make powdered mushrooms, simply put about an ounce of dried mushrooms in a blender and process until powdered. Store it in a jar in the cupboard and add to soups, sauces, or beans to add a bit of umami and flavor. For this soup base recipe, I prefer porcini mushrooms, which add incomparable depth, but shiitake mushrooms are less expensive and more widely available.
