Make your own homemade vegetable powder using excess home-grown vegetables.
Onions, or leeks, carrots and celery are the base of this vegetable stock, with a little nutritional yeast and salt.
Homemade Vegetable Stock Powder
I have a recipe for stock paste on the blog already, but this dehydrated powder version deserves a spot too. I love using stock powder in so many dishes; soups, curries, sauces...
This recipes uses whole vegetables, so there's no waste. It's also completely vegan.
I like using the parts of the vegetable that are so often discarded. The greens of the leeks and the feathery tops of carrots, the leaves of the celery, I don't even bother taking the skin off the garlic.
It's all shredded finely and dried together. Shredding it, or chopping it first really helps to speed up the dehydrating process.
The Stock Powder Drying Process
It is possible to dry this in an oven too but considering a large amount of vegetables are dried at once, a dehydrator with many trays is a lot easier and more effective.
I have an Excalibur dehydrator. They're pricy but so worth their money! Mine is over 12 years old now and it's still like new. I use it all the time too, such as on this fruit leather, and it's so worth while.
However, any dehydrator will work!
For me, it usually takes around 7-8 hours to dry the vegetables and it really depends on how small they were chopped.
This powder will last up to a year if dried correctly. You really need to ensure that every last bit of moisture is gone though.
Flavours and Amounts
The key vegetables in the stock are leek (or onion), carrots and celery. As long as you've got those as the bulk, you can add any other vegetables you like. I've given some rough amounts below, but it depends on what vegetables you've got available. This is a very versatile recipe.
In the summer when zucchini and tomatoes are in abundance, I add those in too.
Once it's dried, it's blitzed into a powder along with rock salt and nutritional yeast.
The nutritional yeast is optional, but it does add a really nice and deep savoury flavour. The rock salt enhances the flavour too, though how much you want to add is up to you.
Have you made this stock powder yet? Tag me and let me know! @home_grown_happinessnz
Homemade Vegetable Stock Powder
Make your own delicious vegetable stock powder.
This makes around 1 ½ cups of stock powder.
Ingredients
- 300 g carrots, unpeeled, carrot tops included
- 300 g whole leeks, green parts too
- 200 g celery, leaves too
- 5-8 cloves of garlic, peeled
- 1 cup mixed fresh herbs
- 2-3 tablespoon nutritional yeast
- 2-3 tablespoon rock salt
Instructions
- Finely shred or chop the vegetables. The smaller they are, the quicker they will dry.
- Place all the vegetables and herbs in single layers onto dehydrating trays or oven trays. Dry the vegetables at around 50-55°C, for around 8 hours until dry. The smaller you chop or shred everything the faster it will dry. If drying in the oven, open the oven door occasionally to let out the steam.
- Once everything is crunchy and has dried completely, add it to a blender along with the nutritional yeast and rock salt. Blitz it into a fine powder.
- Store the stock in an airtight jar. If dried thoroughly it lasts for more than a year.
Notes
1 tablespoon of stock powder mixed with 1 cup of boiling water makes 1 cup of vegetable stock.
Nutrition Information:
Yield: 24 Serving Size: 1 gramsAmount Per Serving: Calories: 27Unsaturated Fat: 0gFiber: 1.5gSugar: 1.2gProtein: 1.9g
Martha Ording says
My sister and I have been dehydrating for years. The flavor in veggies lasts longer if they are left in bigger chunks. So, we keep each type of veggie in separate jars, but in bigger pieces. When we want to cook with them, we can add whatever ratio of chunks of different veggies we want to a dedicated coffee grinder, and blitz it just before adding it to whatever we’re cooking. That also means we can rehydrate veggies without grinding them, and preserve a little more texture.