Mmmmm… Mushroom Stock

What do you do when you want to make recipes that call for condensed cream of mushroom soup, but you can’t use it because the store-bought variety contains onion and/or garlic?  What do you do when you are craving something with a rich mushroom gravy or sauce? What if you need vegetable stock?  Well, in the case of the latter you could make vegetable stock…but today we’re talking about mushrooms!  Growing up I was never a big fan of mushrooms.  Face it, most of us were probably introduced to the canned variety and it’s a texture thing.  As I grew up I learned to appreciate the occasional fresh mushroom in a salad or on a veggie pizza.  In fact the best veggie burger I ever ate was somewhere in Alaska, and it was made mostly of mushrooms!

Making homemade stocks and broths is really very easy. You just need a little time and you’ll probably make a bit of a mess if you’re like me.  It is so worth the time and mess, though, because you get to control the ingredients and make it fresh and healthy!! So, here we go…

The ingredients…

For the fresh mushrooms I used sliced white button mushrooms, because they were on sale.  Use whatever you like!  I also used marjoram because that’s what my store had available fresh that day. You could use oregano instead.  My store only had curly parsley, flat/Italian parsley would work, too. You can also use dried herbs {sorry, haven’t done it myself and don’t have amounts for you}.  Give fresh a try if you can {and organic is even better!} Don’t bother peeling the carrots, just give them a rinse and cut them in 2-3 chunks.  Oops! I forgot to show you the dried mushrooms before I opened them.

You start by throwing them in the pot and covering them with some of the water.  Then cover and simmer them gently for about 15 minutes. Your house might smell a little like dirt…it’ll be okay.  I used Shiitakes, because they were available, you could use other dried mushrooms if you like.  I adapted my recipe from this one at Epicurious.com.  They recommend you start with dried mushrooms for a nice rich stock!  They’ll look more like this after a few minutes…

Next you throw in the rest of the ingredients.  Seriously, can you stand the colorful, natural goodness of these ingredients???

Now you bring it to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer uncovered for about an hour.  No, I didn’t leave it like the beautiful photo above, I stirred it up so it looked like this…

…and later it looked something like this…

The next thing I did was to scoop out all of my vegetables and herbs with a slotted spoon and put them in a fine mesh strainer.  Then give everything a good little squeeze {mushrooms are spongey, they absorb water, you’ll get a few good tablespoons of tasty stock out of them}

Last is the “hardest” part of this EASY recipe. Strain all of the stock through a fine mesh strainer lined with a coffee filter.  This will require patience, and in my case about 6 coffee filters.  Why the coffee filter? I actually started without it and realized there was a grittiness in the bottom of my batter bowl.  So, back into the pot the stock went and out came the coffee filters.  Think about it, mushrooms {kind of like spinach} can hold on to some gritty, sandy particles. Nooooowwww you can get out the funnel and fill your jars.  I filled about 7 pint-sized jars.  I freeze my stock because I have more freezer space available than pantry space, plus I don’t can though some day I’d like to try 🙂 {If you freeze, allow to cool to room temperature before tightening jar lids and freezing.}

I can’t wait to use this rich, tasty stock in my recipes. But first I have a few more things I need to make that I’m out of, like chicken stock, beef stock, catsup, worcestershire sauce…

Give homemade stock a try!