Homemade Vegetable Broth

Hi! Welcome back to Aeri’s kitchen. A few weeks ago, I asked you this question in my community tab, “What would you like to see the most on Aeri’s Kitchen in 2018?” 72% of the people voted for lunch box recipes and ideas. So, I’m going to post many more lunch box recipes this year. The second most voted option was vegetarian recipes, with 18% of the vote. Along with that poll result, today I want to share my homemade vegetable broth recipe with you. Whether you are a vegetarian or not, it is nice to have good homemade broth on hand, so whenever you cook some kind of Korean food, especially soup or stew, you can grab some from your refrigerator or freezer. Many of my soup and stew recipes have steps for making broth with either anchovies or meat. You can replace those non-vegetarian broths with this vegetarian broth. It is easy to make, and it does enhance your Korean food. So, let’s get started.

Yield: 8 Cups

Short Korean Lesson

• JjaJeungNaeDa (짜증내다) = White Blood Cell
• YeotBoDa (엿보다) = Get a sneak peek at

Video Instructions

Main Ingredients:

• 11 Cups Water
• 1 Medium-Sized Onion
• 6 oz Korean Radish
• 6 Garlic Cloves
• 4 Pieces Dried Kelp (1 X 1 inch)
• 2 Green Onions
• 2 Dried Shiitake Mushrooms

Directions

Prepare 1 medium-sized onion, about 6 oz Korean radish, 6 cloves of garlic, 4 pieces of dried kelp (1 X 1 inch), 2 green onions, and 2 dried shiitake mushrooms. Cut the onion in half, and cut the radish into a similar size as the onion. You can also cut the green onions in half. All these ingredients will give you great flavor for your vegetable broth.

However, some of the ingredients might be a little difficult for you to find, such as the Korean radish, shiitake mushrooms, and dried kelp. So, those can be optional, and if that’s the case, use about 8 cups water instead of 11 cups in this recipe to make the broth since it will lose some flavor by omitting them. If you can get all the ingredients, that’s the best. 🙂

Pour 11 cups of water in a large pot.

Put all the prepared vegetable ingredients in the water. Once it start to boil, cook it for about 5 minutes on high.

5 minutes later, take the kelp out of the boiling water and discard it. If you boil the kelp for too long, some sticky juice will come out of the kelp, giving the broth a bitter taste – that’s why we take it out in 5 minutes.

Now, reduce the temperature to medium and cover the pot with a lid. Cook it for about 30 more minutes on medium.

30 minutes later, you will see this brownish-colored broth.

Take out all the cooked vegetables out of the water and discard them, except for the cooked Korean radish and shiitake mushrooms.

You will get about 8 cups worth of vegetable broth.

I like to store my homemade broth in wide-mouth glass jars. These are 4 pint mason jars. A pint jar can hold 2 cups of liquid and a quarter jar can hold about 4 cups.

Pour 2 cups of vegetable broth in each jar. Once it is cools down, put the lid on and store them in the refrigerator. You can use the broth for about 2 weeks. If you want to keep them longer, pour less broth in the jars and put them in the freezer. (If you fill the jars full of broth, the jars can break in the freezer.)

Ince the cooked shiitake mushrooms and radish cool down a bit, you can chop them up and use them in a soup recipe with your vegetable broth. You could make a simple soybean paste soup with them by adding some tofu and onion.

 

I didn’t add any salt in this broth, so you can use this broth for my other recipes without messing up the saltiness as you use plain water. If you make your own soup, I recommend seasoning it with little bit of Korean soup soy sauce. I prefer soup soy sauce than pure salt for the flavor. This is the soup soy sauce I always use for my Korean cooking.

For my next video, I will show you how to make a vegetarian version of the Korean tofu stew called “soondubu jjigae”. I will use this vegetable broth for it. So, stay tuned. This broth was still very delicious, even though it didn’t have any meat or seafood in it. I cannot wait to share my vegetable sundubu jjigae recipe with you. 🙂

I asked people to do a hashtag #aeriskitchen on instagram, if they have pictures of korean food that they tried my recipes, and many people did. I also got permission from them to show their pictures to you. Thank you very much for all the pictures you hashtagged for aeriskitchen. I would like to share delicious food pictures with you more in the future, so please hashtag aeriskitchen on instagram or facebook.