This natural vegetable stock paste recipe – a broth concentrate packed with vegetables, herbs and other umami seasonings. A fantastic base for vegetarian risottos, sauces and soups.

Imagine having ALL these ingredients in your vegetable stock. Not just whatever flavour seeps into the stock water, but the ingredients in their entirety, no part wasted. Then imagine using these ingredients to make enough stock to last you months – not just a few meals.

Imagine no more! Welcome to the world of homemade vegetable stock paste.

Beautiful fresh vegetables – all the fibre, nutrients, minerals, everything. Celery, onions, courgettes, carrots, mushrooms, tomatoes…

Flavour packed seasonings – dried shiitakes, sun-dried tomatoes, tomato purée, garlic…

Tons of fresh herbs – basil, parsley, thyme, rosemary, bay leaves…

Finished with umami-rich ‘Parmesan’ (omit to make it vegan) and a little white wine and olive oil, with enough sea salt to keep this paste well preserved for at least six months in the fridge…

If you want to reduce the salt content, you can store this paste in the freezer, but remember it is a concentrated paste and you will only ever be using about 1 tablespoon of paste per litre of water, so the salt content doesn’t account to much per serving.

All these great ingredients, when cooked and properly puréed, can be completely dissolved in water – there may be a few small pieces of herbs in the liquid, but that is all.

This flavourful, long-lasting, delicious, nutritious seasoning has an endless array of uses. Swap milk for stock to make a greatly improved béchamel sauce. Never miss the chicken stock in a risotto again. Cook your pasta in stock instead of water for even more taste (check out an innovative way to make pasta that retains the maximum amount of flavour here – great to use with this stock). Endless…

There are so many ways your food will be improved with the addition of this stock. My family, who are normally fairly cool in their response to receiving my food gifts for Christmas, actively request this. The only reason I can think that it is not on the market, is the comparative costs involved for the producer (not for the consumer!). Why sell a product packed with fresh vegetables and umami-rich flavourings and seasonings, when you can sell salt, monosodium glutamate and dried carrots instead?

Print Recipe

5 from 1 vote

Vegetable stock paste

An all-natural, umami-rich, vegetable-packed stock paste for seasoning innumerable dishes.

Ingredients

400 g celery
300 g carrots topped and tailed but unpeeled
350 g onions peeled
100 g fresh tomato
600 g courgette
200 g fresh chestnut mushrooms
5 sun-dried tomatoes
70 g tomato purée
8 cloves garlic peeled
3 dried shiitake mushrooms ground to a powder
1 tablespoon black pepper ground to a powder
2 bay leaves
10 g fresh sage leaves
10 g fresh rosemary leaves
10 g fresh thyme leaves
200 g sea salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
100 g drinkable dry, white wine
150 g Parmesan finely grated (100g miso paste for vegan)
10 g fresh basil leaves
40 g parsley leaves and stems

Instructions

Food Processor Method

Chop the large vegetables into large chunks and use a food processor to finely chop the vegetables, sun-dried tomatoes, tomato purée, garlic, shiitake mushroom powder, black pepper, bay leaves, sage, rosemary and thyme. You may need to do this in batches.
Transfer to a large pan, add the salt, oil and wine and combine with a spoon. Simmer on medium-low heat for 30 minutes, stirring frequently to avoid the bottom catching and burning and to make sure the entire contents are cooked evenly.
Transfer the mixture back to your food processor (you may need to do this in batches, so divide the following ingredients as necessary). Add the Parmesan (or miso paste), parsley and basil (these herbs are 'soft' and are better without long cooking). Process for at least 1 minute on maximum speed. You want the ingredients to be completely puréed and homogenous (increase the speed gradually because the ingredients are hot).
Divide among sterilised containers and store in the fridge or freezer (depending on your salt content). If you are freezing your paste, sterilising is not really necessary. And to be honest, I have generally taken a more laissez-faire attitude to sterilising when making this paste and haven't run into any difficulties yet. As ever, you decide!

Thermomix Method

If using this machine, you will need to divide the above quantities in two and process/cook everything in two separate batches.
Chop the large vegetables into large chunks and process the vegetables, sun-dried tomatoes, tomato purée, garlic, shiitake mushroom powder, black pepper, bay leaves, sage, rosemary and thyme on Speed 6/10 seconds.
Add the salt, oil and wine and cook for 20 minutes on Varoma/Speed 1.
Add the Parmesan (miso paste for vegan), parsley and basil (these herbs are 'soft' and are better without long cooking). Process for 1 minute on Speed 10 (increase the speed gradually because the ingredients are hot).
Divide among sterilised containers and store in the fridge or freezer (depending on your salt content). If you are freezing your paste, sterilising is not really necessary. And to be honest, I have generally taken a more laissez-faire attitude to sterilising when making this paste and haven't run into any difficulties yet. As ever, you decide!

Notes

To make this recipe vegan, substitute a light miso paste for the Parmesan.
This recipe yields about 2kg. This is a large quantity recipe because it stores so well, has so many uses and frankly, if you're going to take the trouble, you may as well make a load. And because so many people request this as gifts! But if you don't think you'll need so much, just divide the recipe as necessary.

Adapted from Everyday Cooking, Thermomix