Canning Vegetable Scrap Broth in the Pressure Canner

With all of my onion dehydrating, carrot canning, and cooking, I’ve had a lot of vegetable scraps. So with the theme of using all of my food scraps for something useful lately, I’ve been keeping all of my onion skins, carrot tops and greens, and any other veggie scraps (like zucchini ends and asparagus stems) that I happen to make, in a storage bag in the freezer until I had enough to make vegetable broth.

I just recently filled that bag until I couldn’t put any more in it and started on a second bag, so I felt like it was time to get a round of vegetable broth going. I use broth in so many different meals, from soups and gravies to sauce mixes for my various casserole dishes. I love being able to create something delicious and usable, which saves me a great deal of money in the long run, from scraps I would have just thrown away.

What people don’t realize is that the skins, greens and other scraps of veggies have tons of great vitamins in them. Yes, onions skins, carrot greens, and the stems off of various vegetables like squash and zucchini for instance, are all very nutritious. However, most people don’t take advantage of the nutrition they offer, because who eats onion skins?

We typically leave skins on our potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, cucumbers, etc. when we cook them in order to get all of the great nutrition from them that we can. I don’t however, use the bruised, infected, moldy, or rotten vegetables, or parts of vegetables. At that point, I don’t think the nutritional value is worth the risk, if there is any left.

I would highly recommend this to anyone. It’s satisfying to know that I am saving my family money making tons of great food for relatively free, that we are going to use. And it was strangely delicious. Let’s see how you can make it for yourself.

How much food, as a society, do we throw away every day, every week, and every year because we aren’t using it? Americans throw away approximately $165 billion worth of food each year, and for the average American family, that can be up to $2,200 per household, according to a recent study by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). If only we could find a way to use the food we purchase in the best possible way, we could cut down that number, and each individual family’s food budget with it.

We grow a good amount of our own food ourselves in our back yard. We are renting currently, so we can’t exactly plow up the back yard and plant a huge garden, nor would it be a good investment to do so, as we don’t plan on being here for more than another year or two. So, for now, our plants are in pots in the rocks surrounding our yard. You could easily do the same thing on your back patio or porch. We are currently growing lots of tomatoes, carrots, sun berries (blueberries that grow in Colorado), beans, pumpkins, kale, spinach, strawberries, and a variety of herbs and other greens.

The vegetables that we purchase from the store are always organic and on sale from our local organic grocery store, Sprouts. I purchase in bulk to take the best advantage of the sales and save money. Food we don’t eat or preserve right away goes in the freezer, and then I dry a good deal of it in my dehydrators, like onions, and can the rest of it in jars. I’ve been trying to get better at using our food scraps, now that we no longer have chickens. Banana peels and egg shells get ground up and used in our garden, fruit scraps get used to make flavored vinegars, jellies, candies and juices, whereas my veggie scraps are being used for vegetable broth. I even use my chicken, pork, and beef scraps and bones to make broth.

Having less waste is going to come down to rethinking how you eat, and rethinking what you throw away and how it can be used. Not everything is going to have a use in every household. I understand that. But anything you can do will lower your grocery bill, reduce the waste in your home, and make you feel better about doing your part for your family.

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