Shredded veggies, spices and herbs steeped like tea to create a quick and flavorful vegetable broth. For those moments you realize you have no veggie broth and you don’t have 4 hours to make some.
This vegetable broth is also an easy replacement for store-bought broth. In my opinion “tea broth” is good enough to drink by itself, I was testing it out and I found myself drinking more than just a taste, it’s surprisingly really flavorful, like a savory drink.
I love tasting ingredients by themselves so I tried an organic broth I bought from the store… oh my not even close to the same, I had to spit it out.
All you do is shred the parsnip and celriac, chop the fresh herbs, slice the mushrooms and garlic and add in the whole spices. Then you pour hot water on top and put a lid on. In about an hour you’ll have a light broth that can be used for many different recipes. You can also re-use the same veggies, spices and herbs for a second batch.
A while back I remember browsing the cookbook section at the library and coming across a few cookbooks that revolved around tea. Tea was in every recipe, it was an interesting concept, and ever since I’ve wanted to make a tea inspired recipe.
I drink tea everyday and I am always amazed at how a little bit of licorice root can sweeten a quart of tea. I also love how raspberry leaf and lemon balm can create a flavorful lemon raspberry tea. If a little bit of herb can go that far in a quart of water I wondered what vegetables, spices and herbs would do.
Parsnip is like an ultra concentrated carrot and celeriac tastes just like celery. Of course you could always use regular celery and carrot for this, I would chop the celery and shred the carrot in the same proportions.
You could use a variety of different spices and herbs, one of my favorites is fenugreek, I love the rich warm flavor it brings. The spice and herb combination is really up to you, in this recipe I left you a blank canvas with just the basics included and some recommended options.
I hope I’ve inspired you to make some tea broth this year!
Veggie Tea Broth
INGREDIENTS
- 1/2 cup celriac; shredded
- 1/2 cup parsnip; shredded
- 1/4 cup mushrooms; sliced
- 1/4 cup fresh fennel; chopped
- 1/4 cup fresh parsley; chopped
- 1/8 cup onion; chopped
- 1 garlic clove; sliced
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp black peppercorn
Optional Spices
- 1/2 tsp fenugreek
- 1/2 tsp mustard seed
- 1/2 tsp ginger root
INSTRUCTIONS
- Bring a little over 1 quart water to a boil.
- Cut all the vegetables and herbs as specified to get the maximum flavors.
- Put all the ingredients in a quart sized mason jar.
- Pour the hot water over the veggies, spices and herbs.
- Let steep for about 1 hour, or until warm.
- Strain the broth into another quart sized mason jar, and re-steep the same veggies.
NOTES
Comments 5
Hi this is great. Also I was wondering if you could do this same process except with coconut milk? I want to make ‘golden milk ‘ with raw turmeric, parsnips and gold beets. Was wondering if the root veggies will cook into the coconut milk enough so i could strain the veggies at the end. Thanks
Author
I think that sounds like a wonderful idea. Just make sure the veggies are cut up very fine and it should work perfect! Let me know how it goes if you do end up trying. 🙂
Sadly this ruins the ingredients entirely if you’re going to make a broth base you don’t want to pour boiling water with the ingredient in a mason jar.
Make a normal broth with cold water with the ingredients so you gain all the benefits of the fresh ingredients being leached into the broth you’re making. The flavors will also be much more pleasant with the proper balance. If you want to kick it up a notch you can add earl grey or black tea leaves to add a real tea component which will add some nice color to the broth as well. I personally brew the tea on the side, and add it to either a vegetable or beef stock. Or use the tea as a base for a broth entirely. Adding spring onions chopped, sweet onions wedged, and a little cubed ham makes for some interesting recipes to experiment with.
Author
I agree that this is not the best method to achieve maximum flavor. However, the intention of this post was to show an extremely quick method. It was Thanksgiving when I had to do this because I ran out of the broth that I made “right” and I didn’t have time to go to the store. I also didn’t have an available burner on my stove. So this worked well enough where I decided to share.
This looks great to me. I needed to know how long to steep a vegetable tea from another recipe. I appreciate your experience, which I will now follow. I am glad to know another chef finds the steeping of vegetables to be a useful technique. Thanks for posting!!