Sam Wise

There’s a pretty simple backstory here: I wanted to make soup, but when I went to buy groceries the store was out of both vegetable broth and bouillon, but had mushrooms on sale. I did some Internet searching and learned that making your own broth is pretty simple and easy, so I decided to try making my own mushroom broth to use as a substitute for vegetable broth in my recipes.

In my Internet searching, I also learned the actual difference between a broth and a stock. Although most people use the words interchangeably, stock is traditionally made from bones, while broth is made with meat and/or vegetables. This is kind of fun, because it means that “bone broth” is actually, by definition, bone stock, and “vegetable stock” doesn’t exist.

This recipe is my own creation but it’s very, very flexible. You can swap out the vegetables and herbs to suit your own tastes. If you wanted to, you could switch the brown mushrooms for a trendier medicinal mushroom, like reishi or chaga, or for whatever your grocery store has. You could also use the same method to make other homemade broths, like vegetable broth or chicken broth.

Ingredients:

• One carton of brown mushrooms (these are sometimes labeled baby bella mushrooms or crimini mushrooms)
• One onion, roughly chopped
• [optional] One cup of dry white wine (I used chardonnay)
• 8 cups water
• Dried thyme, to taste
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• Garlic powder, to taste
• Olive oil or another cooking oil

Recipe:

• Saute the mushrooms in olive oil over medium heat for 10 minutes.
• While the mushrooms are cooking, go ahead and chop the onion. I like to leave the skin on when I’m making broth (it adds a really nice color), but you can remove it if you want.
• Add the onions to the pan, and saute for another 10 minutes (or 20 minutes if you decide to skip the next step).
• Add your white wine, stir everything together and let it simmer for (you guessed it!) another 10 minutes to let the alcohol cook off.
• Add 8 cups of water to the pot with your mushrooms. Add the thyme, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Turn the heat up to high.
• When the water comes to a boil, turn the heat down to low and cover the pot with a lid. Let simmer for at least 2 hours.
• When your broth is done simmering, use a sieve to strain out the mushroom and onion chunks and transfer the liquid to a clean container. Store the container in the fridge and use it in the same ways you would use vegetable, chicken, or beef broth when cooking.