Instant Pot Rich Vegetable Broth Recipe

I love winter, cold weather and I love it mostly because it gives me an excuse to eat 24/7 soups, broths, ramen and everything in between. This doesn’t mean I stop doing it in Summer but… well, when eating a ramen becomes kinda like spending 30 minutes in a sauna at the gym, it’s trickier. But, luckily for us it’s still quite cold out there, so today I want to share with you one of my favorite Instant Pot recipes: My rich vegetable broth recipe.

🇫🇷 La recette est disponible en bas en français !

Ingredients

The list of ingredients I’m going to give are the ones I usually use to make my vegetable broth. However, any vegetable (except for a few exceptions) would work great in this broth. The vegetables I used were:

• Leeks
• Potatoes
• Onions
• Carrots
• Mushrooms (they give an amazing layer of richness)
• Celery
• Garlic (not in the picture, but I almost everything I cook has garlic, most of you know that by now)

The list is very simple but trust me, the flavors will be great. Some other vegetables you can use if you have them around:

• Shiitake mushrooms: Normal mushrooms give amazing flavor but Shiitake just take the broth to another level. My mushroom guy at the local market did not have any Shiitake so I just took the regular ones.
• Turnip
• Green cabbage
• Parsnip

How to cook this vegetable broth recipe?

We are using the Instant Pot in this recipe but if you don’t have an Instant Pot, you can totally do this recipe on the stove top, it will just take longer.

We are going to start by sautéing our vegetables (onion, garlic and potatoes) a bit. This will give some nice flavor to the broth. So, add some olive oil to the IP, click on sauté and when hot, add the chunks of onion, potato and garlic. Cook for around 5 minutes then turn off the sauté function.

Add the rest of the vegetables making sure you don’t go over the MAX line of the IP. Add water and if you want some basic spices (I added fines herbs and a bit of salt and pepper).

Close up the IP, set the valve to sealing position and press the manual button / pressure Cook button and adjust the time to 30 minutes. The Instant Pot will take a very long time to build up the pressure: this is completely normal. There is a lot of liquid and we are going to make it work a lot today. My IP took around 35 minutes to start the timer. Yours can take less, or more, but don’t freak out if you have done everything right. The timer will start at some point.

Once the 30 minutes have passed, we will do a NPR. It took 40 minutes for my IP’s valve to come down. The result: an amazing, rich, delicious vegetable broth.

To make this vegetable broth on the stovetop

Do the exact same thing I described above (sautéing the potatoes, onion and garlic, then adding all the veggies and liquid) and cook for about 3h hours at very low temperature. The longer you cook it, the better the flavor.

What to do with this vegetable broth recipe?

So now that you have around 1.5l of vegetable broth and a lot of cooked veggies: what do you do with all of that?

Escudella – traditional catalan soup

The possibilities are endless. You can choose to go the traditional way and have a bit of escudella. For those who don’t know what that is, escudella is a traditional meal in Catalunya. The basic recipe has a lot of meat, but we don’t care. To have this: use the broth to cook yourself some soup pasta (like short pasta noodles, or shell pasta). You serve that in a bowl and on the side you have your veggies with potatoes. It sounds basic, but I have been eating this since I was born and trust me it’s a treat.

Noodle soup

Another possibility is to use the broth to make some noodle soup: it won’t be like ramen because we haven’t used any ramen ingredients like dashi or soy sauce, but it will still be an amazing base for a noodle soup.

Rice based dishes

Risottos, paellas, and everything rice based that requires a vegetable broth will be taken to a whole new level with a homemade vegetable broth.

Sauces and gravies

Most of these ask for vegetable broth. You can totally use store-bought veggie broth but homemade always makes everything tastier.

A whole lot of Instant Pot recipes

I think every single Instant Pot recipe I have ever featured on tofucado has included “vegetable broth” in the ingredient list. So, some other ideas: my 20 minute pasta recipe, and all my how to cook beans in the Instant Pot recipe series.

As you can see, this vegetarian broth recipe is versatile and gives you a great basis for a lot of recipes. It is also good to just have a cup of vegetable broth when it’s really cold.

Print Recipe

Instant Pot Rich Vegetable Broth Recipe

Prep Time10 mins

Cook Time30 mins

Total Time1 hr 40 mins

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Mediterranean

Keyword: broth, veggies

Servings: 4

Equipment

• Instant Pot

Ingredients

• 2 onions
• 3 potatoes
• 5 Celery sticks
• 1 big leek
• 5 to 6 small carrots
• 4 big mushrooms
• 5 garlic cloves
• Olive oil
• Spices: fines herbs salt and pepper
• 9 cups of water

Instructions

• Cut all the vegetables in big chunks.
• Set the IP to sauté and add some olive oil.
• Cook the potatoes, onion and garlic for 5 minutes. Turn off the sauté function.
• Add all the other vegetables, the spices and the water. Make sure you don’t go over the MAX limit of your IP.
• Close the lid, set the vent to pressure and then click on manual. Set the timer to 30 minutes. The Instant Pot will take around 30 to 40 minutes to reach pressure, it’s normal.
• When the timer goes off, leave the IP alone until the pressure is released naturally. It took 40 minutes for my pressure valve to go down on its own.
• Enjoy it! But be careful, it will be really hot. You can store the broth in individual pots (You will have around 1.5 to 2l of broth). You can store the veggies on containers and use them for any recipe you wish.

🇫🇷 Bouillon végétale très riche avec l’instant Pot