Vegan vegetable stock, organic?

Vegan vegetable stock ( organic) has a strong taste and is used as a basic ingredient for soups and sauces.

Use in the kitchen

Vegetable stock is not eaten on its own as it has a very intense flavour. It is used in a similar way to vegetable broth to flavour sauces, braised dishes, risotto, dals, stews and soups. Food cooked in stock has more flavour as it contains flavours and minerals, some of which are transferred to the food being cooked.

High-quality stock does not contain salt. The salt contained comes naturally from the ingredients used. When using vegetable stock without added salt, you determine the salt content yourself by adding more. Once your taste buds have adjusted (takes around 3 months), you no longer need to add any salt.

How do bouillon, broth and stock differ? With vegetable stock, you boil the vegetables in water. You don't eat the vegetables, but you separate them from the stock after boiling them. That's why "vegetable waste" such as trimmings and peels, and possibly herbs and spices, are suitable for making stock. In contrast to stock, with vegetable broth, you only boil the vegetables in water until they are cooked. At the end, you salt the broth as needed. The vegetables can be eaten with the broth or you can filter the vegetable broth to reuse it. Bouillon is a strong broth (concentrated broth) that thickens through prolonged cooking and water evaporation. It is important that you put the vegetables in cold water without salt and then bring to the boil. This is the only way to transfer the flavor into the water. In addition, the water should not bubble, but only simmer gently to preserve the flavor. The end product is not raw.

Making your own vegetable stock

Vegetable stock without salt is easy to make yourself from different types of vegetables. Root vegetables such as carrots, celeriac, leeks, savoy cabbage and onions are suitable. You can supplement these with parsley, lovage, thyme, cloves or bay leaves. Button mushrooms, porcini mushrooms and shiitake mushrooms give the stock a hearty taste. Beetroot, pak choi, broccoli, white cabbage and kohlrabi are less suitable because they make the stock bitter. Using corn, potatoes, pumpkin and sweet potatoes leads to the stock becoming cloudy. A small chili pepper provides spiciness if required.

The following link takes you to our recipe: vegan vegetable stock.

For an Asian-inspired vegetable stock you can also use ginger, lemongrass or Thai basil (Horapa).

Vegan recipe for pumpkin soup with vegetable stock

Ingredients (for 4 people): 1 Hokkaido pumpkin (raw), 2 carrots (organic), 1 sweet potato (raw), 2 shallots (raw), 1 teaspoon rapeseed oil, 1 l vegetable stock, 1-2 cm ginger (raw), 1 teaspoon chili flakes, 1 teaspoon sweet paprika powder, salt,black pepper, 8 stalks parsley (raw).

Preparation: Wash and dry the pumpkin, halve it and scrape out the seeds with a spoon. Cut the flesh into small pieces. Peel the sweet potato and wash the carrots, then cut into small pieces. Peel the shallots and chop them. Wash the parsley, shake it dry and then chop it.

Heat rapeseed oil in a pan and sauté shallot, pumpkin and carrots. Then add sweet potato and Add the chili flakes and fry while stirring. Deglaze the vegetables with the stock and stir everything well. Add the stock little by little. Mix in the paprika powder, a pinch of salt and pepper and let the vegetables simmer covered for about 15 minutes. Peel the ginger and grate finely. Add the ginger to the soup and stir well. Take the pot off the stove and use a hand blender to finely purée the soup. Pour the pumpkin soup into bowls or soup plates and sprinkle with the freshly chopped parsley.

Vegan recipes with vegan vegetable stock can be found under the note: " Recipes that use the most of this ingredient ".

Purchasing - Storage

Vegetable stock, in liquid form, is mainly available in screw-top jars. Major retailers such as Migros, Coop, Spar, Rewe, Edeka, Hofer and Billa have vegetable stock in their range, some of which is organic. At Aldi, Lidl, Denner and Volg you won't find it in the standard range, but you may occasionally find it as a special offer. Vegetable stock is sometimes available to buy in health food stores and organic supermarkets such as Denn's Biomarkt and Alnatura. The vegan vegetable stocks you buy often contain added salt, vegetable oil, yeast extracts, flavors and stabilizers. If you want to use "salt-free" vegetable stock without additives, you often have to make it yourself.

The availability of vegetable stock varies depending on the size of the store, catchment area, etc. You can find our recorded food prices for the DA-CH countries above under the ingredient image - and by clicking you can see their development at various suppliers.

Storage tips:

Stored vegetable stock can be stored at room temperature until the best-before date, protected from light. Opened jars should be kept in the refrigerator and consumed within a few days.

Homemade liquid vegetable stock will last for a few days in the fridge. For a longer shelf life, it should be pasteurized or sterilized.

Ingredients - Nutritional values - Calories

We calculated the values given in the nutritional table from the ingredients of the vegan vegetable stock recipe. These are approximate values, as this is a natural product.

100 g of vegan vegetable stock provides an energy content of approx. 16 kcal. It is practically fat-free (0.57 g/100g) and protein-free (0.37 g/100g). It contains only a few carbohydrates (2.6 g/100g). With a salt content of 50 mg, it contains very little salt. ¹

This vegetable stock contains a similar amount of vitamin K (14 µg/100g) as pomegranate syrup. Raw vegetables such as chard (830 µg/100g) or kale (705 µg/100g) contain much higher levels of this fat-soluble vitamin.

The vitamin A content is 56 µg/100g and is comparable to apple syrup. Carrot juice has a much higher value of 956 µg/100g, which even covers the daily requirement.

Vegetable stock contains folate as a folic acid active substance group at 10 µg/100g. This value covers 5% of the daily requirement, similar to that of jacket potatoes. Raw pulses have a high folate content. The cooking process reduces the content of the water-soluble vitamin: raw kidney beans have 395 µg/100g, cooked : 130 µg/100g.

You can find all the ingredients of vegan vegetable stock, the coverage of the daily requirement and comparison values with other ingredients in our nutrient tables. In the article Nutrients explained you will get a detailed insight into the topic.

Effects on health

Homemade vegetable stock with lots of vegetables and herbs scores points for its naturalness. In addition to a very low sugar and sodium content that occurs naturally in vegetables, it does not contain any added flavors, flavor enhancers (glutamate, yeast extract), preservatives or fillers.

Vegan vegetable stock without added salt helps reduce sodium consumption. Excessive salt consumption is associated with an increased risk of hypertension (high blood pressure), cardiovascular disease and organ-damaging secondary diseases. ^6,7 For this reason, the WHO recommends keeping sodium intake below 2 g per day, which corresponds to less than 5 g of salt per day (≈ 1 tsp). ⁸

Dangers - Intolerances - Side effects

Celery is contained in many vegetable stocks and is one of the 14 main allergens. If you are sensitive to celery, read the ingredients list of a purchased vegetable stock carefully.

Vegetable stocks can contain yeast extract as a flavor enhancer. Yeast extract is an industrially modified ingredient and unhealthy in large quantities. For a long time it was considered the better alternative to artificially produced glutamate. Yeast extract is now also controversial because of the glutamic acid it contains. This has a similar effect to glutamate and blocks the feeling of satiety, so that we eat more than necessary. ^2,3 Organic yeast extract is no better and we recommend using natural herbs and spices to improve and intensify the flavor. Yeast extract is not a food additive and does not have to be officially labeled as a flavor enhancer, unlike industrially produced monosodium glutamate (MSG) E621 or other glutamates in isolated form. ⁴ Even products with the EU organic seal ⁵ may contain yeast extract - but glutamate is prohibited there.

Ecological footprint - animal welfare

Commercial vegetable broths have a CO ₂ footprint of approximately 5.03 kg CO ₂ eq/kg. ⁹ This greenhouse potential can be compared with cocoa powder (5 kg CO ₂ eq/kg), tomato paste (4.3 kg CO ₂ eq/kg) and fish from aquaculture (5.1 kg CO ₂ eq/kg). ¹⁶

The Tagesspiegel in cooperation with AYCE.earth offers the possibility to calculate the CO ₂ footprint of your own recipes on its website. ¹¹ We tried this out with our recipe for vegan vegetable stock :

A standard portion of our homemade stock has 0.319 kg CO ₂ eq/kg. If you convert the greenhouse gas potential to the calorie content, you get 0.621 kg CO ₂ per 500 kcal. This recipe therefore produces 36% fewer CO ₂ equivalents than the average of the foods examined. The soup can therefore be classified as very climate-friendly. ¹¹

While vegetable and chicken broth are in the "green" range, beef broth falls into the category 'These foods worsen our carbon footprint'. ¹²

Regarding the water footprint, we show a study of gazpacho: This cold Spanish soup consists of tomatoes,pepper, onion, cucumber, garlic, olive oil and vinegar. The water footprint according to this calculation was 580.5 l/l of soup. ¹⁰ For comparison: vegetables have a global average water consumption of 322 l/kg, fruit 962 l/kg, eggs 3265 l/kg and beef 15,415 l/kg. ¹³

For detailed explanations of various sustainability indicators (such as ecological footprint, _CO2 footprint, water footprint), see our article: What does the ecological footprint mean?

Animal welfare - species protection

When buying, look for organically certified products. Chemical substances used in conventional agriculture not only have negative effects on our health, ¹⁵ but also on all other living creatures. In the EU, 24.5% of endangered species are threatened by agricultural pollutants such as pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. ¹⁴

Further information

Commercially available vegetable stock consists mainly of salt, fat, seasoning, flavour enhancers, spices and only a small amount of vegetables. Salt makes the vegetable stock last longer. The content varies greatly depending on the manufacturer.

Alternative names

In English, vegetable stock is called vegetable broth. Vegetable broth is the name for vegetable stock.