Dino Sarma Recipes

Add a Comment

Comment by Dino Sarma 22 hours ago

Alberta: 

Couple of things about store bought stock. 

• For a stock to be a stock on the industrial scale, you need to put in a homeopathic amount of vegetable. The veggies are there for color, and a vague taste. This isn't what's doing the heavy lifting. However, it's an inexpensive way to use up scraps from canned or frozen vegetable production. The peels, odd ends, and other bits can easily be thrown into the stock pot, and have no issues. 
• The herbs and spices are going to do the heavy lifting for taste. Lovage is one of those that tastes a bit like celery. Excellent in stock. 
  • The turmeric in there is for color, not taste. 
  • The mushrooms will be mushroom stems, not the caps. They give plenty of taste without ending up in the final product. For example, they'd use like shiitake stems, which are inedible. 
  • Tomato is definitely there for taste.
  • Leek would be leek tops and the bottoms that are discarded when you're making leeks. 
• Natural flavor. NOW we're in the actual main taste that you're getting with stock. Natural flavor can be any flavor that exists in nature. 
  • In a conventional stock powder, this will be done with MSG. Absolutely nothing wrong with MSG. It gives stuff a lovely flavor. 
  • However, if the thing is merely listed as "natural flavor" it's most likely going to be yeast extract that's added, which has natural MSG in it. In Australia, I believe you have Vegemite, which is essentially yeast extract + vegetable extract. 

So based on this, we can glean a couple of things:

• Store bought stock is perfectly fine if you can't be bothered to keep a bag of scraps in your freezer, because there's really nothing in there that's objectionable. 
• HOWEVER, it is a bit of a waste of money, in my opinion. If you already are adding onion, garlic, celery, carrot, etc to your dish, vegetable stock is a waste. What you can do instead, is add spices to the base, and then add plain water to the dish.
  • For example. Say you're making a basic vegetable stew. In a large pot, you'd add celery, onions, carrots, leeks, garlic. Let it cook in a bit of oil, until softened. Add some turmeric, and fry the turmeric and veggies together. Add some bay leaves, thyme, sage, rosemary, lovage, savory, marjoram, oregano, or whatever other herbs you like. Cook that with the veggies and the rest. Add some tomato paste, and a bit of extra oil. Cook until the tomato paste starts to stick to the bottom of the pot, and get a bit toasty smelling. Add some nutritional yeast, and stir well. Add water, until the soup is to your desired thickness. Then throw in whatever other vegetables or proteins you'd like, and you'll have an extremely tasty and comforting soup. Finish with a sprinkle of MSG if you really want the whole thing to come together perfectly. 
• If you're not making a soup, you should flavor your water however you want to get the taste you want. The issue with using stock in everything is that then everything tastes like stock.
  • For example, if you're rehydrating TVP, and you want a flavorful liquid, boil some water, add some soy sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, and a spot of cayenne pepper. If you want to boost the rich savory taste, they sell powdered shiitake. Throw some in with the water. Use that to soak your TVP. 
  • If you're trying to add taste to a risotto, boil some water, throw in some nutritional yeast, a bit of oregano, and some onion powder, and let it sit for 5 minutes on the boil. 

Mainly, I'm trying to get you away from relying on stock if you can help it, and when you can't give yourself permission to buy store bought. Making it at home is a faff, and having your freezer looking like a compost bin isn't pleasant. 

Comment by Alberta Louise yesterday

Dino,

         I am using an amazing store-bought vegan stock made in Australia called "Nuttelex". Ingredients include the herb lovage. Other ingredients are water, vegetable (carrot, onion, tomato, garlic, mushroom, leek, turmeric and natural flavour). In the world of home-made stocks (everyone has their own special ingredients) do you have any advice for us? 

Comment by Dino Sarma on February 23, 2012 at 11:48

Thanks, Mo Orr! I figured that most people would enjoy a primer on cooking things that can have them branching out into all kind of other things. :) 

Comment by Mo Orr on February 11, 2012 at 16:47

Thanks Dino. I've finally learned to cook thanks to the Alternative Vegan. High five!