Roasted-Vegetable Stock

My first gallon-sized broth bag was full, so I decided to make the other kind of vegetable broth.  The easy one I did last time was just simmered after a light sauté.  Really, I ought to finish the last two jars of fish stock before filling more quart jars, but I do use vegetable stock more often.

After lining a baking sheet with foil, I dumped the contents of the bag into the stockpot so I could toss them in oil.  Probably should have defrosted them first.  Once they were lightly coated with oil, I spread them out on the baking sheet.  It was interesting to see the kinds of things I had saved.  There were ends of onions, green onions, red onions, shallots, and carrots, the green part of a leek, about half an artichoke, and a lot of kale ribs.  I'm counting the kale as a suitable substitute for celery.  After roasting them at 375º for about an hour, they smelled wonderful and looked like this:

The next step was to put the veggies back in the stock pot with water to cover.  This was when I discovered that lining the pan with foil had been a very good idea.  Yay, me.  I was able to pry off almost everything.  To the veggies went in the remainder of my old head of garlic, a bit of fresh rosemary off the bush by the front door, a few sprigs of the thyme I still have in the fridge, two bay leaves, several whole coriander seeds, and about six whole peppercorns.  Water-to-cover was about 3 quarts.  Bring to a boil, lower heat to a simmer, and go do other stuff for another hour.

I decided to strain this batch through my cheese-making cloth, which is a piece of bleached cotton fabric, to see just how pure I could get it.  Using this method, I ended up with three jars of tea-colored broth that smelled every bit like the roasted veggies had out of the oven.  I only filled the jars to the 800ml mark because you're not really supposed to put quart jars in the freezer and I knew the broth was going to expand a lot.  That makes the yield about 2-1/2 quarts, or 5 cups.

Guess I'll start a new broth bag.  I'm thinking chicken for the next batch, or maybe get some of those beef soup bones that I always see in the market and never buy.