How to Make Homemade Vegetable Broth in an Instant Pot

Thank you for sharing!

I would like to share with you how to make your own vegetable broth. It is so easy and very useful for lots of cooking purposes. You can use it as the basis for soup, making a sauce for stir-fries, cooking vegetables, and making salad dressing. You can also use it in mashed potatoes, for simmering foods, and adding extra flavor to quinoa, rice, and other grains.

This is a great way to use up some vegetable scraps, which can then be composted. Add in a few vegetables you probably have in your refrigerator or pantry already, like carrots, celery, and onion. You can even add in garlic for more flavor.

How to Prepare Vegetable Broth in the Instant Pot

1. Save up your vegetable trimmings. Carrots, celery, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, mushrooms, potatoes, leeks, kale, garlic, and onions all are great for broth. I suggest choosing organic vegetables. Toss them in a container in the freezer. Skip the skins of onion and garlic and cruciferous vegetables like broccoli or cabbage, as they could make your broth bitter.
2. Add a chopped carrot, celery stalk, and half of an onion. You don’t need to peel the carrot or chop the veggies in small pieces. I just chop them each into a few chunks. You could also include some apple or pear pieces (skip the seeds). Add in some fresh herbs like parsley, and even a bay leaf if you have it. Toss in fresh herbs if you have them like basil, thyme, oregano, and parsley. Add a dried bay leaf, and/or a few peppercorns.
3. In the Instant Pot, cook the vegetable scraps and vegetables with 10 cups of water for 25 minutes on high pressure. Let the pressure release naturally or wait at least 15 minutes to release it.
4. Cool and strain. Discard or compost the solids.

How to Make Vegetable Broth on the Stove

On the stovetop, boil a large pot of water. with the vegetables, vegetable scraps, and herbs. Turn down the heat to a simmer and cook for an hour. Then let it cool, strain it, and discard or compost the solids. 

A lot of recipes include salt. I intentionally don’t add salt to broth in order to keep the sodium content low. Then I can add a little salt to the final recipe I am making as needed. 

Now you can use the broth or store it in small containers in the freezer for a few months. Just pull out what you need for a recipe. The broth will last for a few days in the refrigerator also.

Advantages of Homemade Vegetable Broth

This broth is so easy to make. It is a nice feeling to have broth cooking away on a weekend morning: the house smells great and you know you will be ready to do some meal prep too. You will also avoid the preservatives and high sodium content (500 – 900 mg per cup!) in store-bought vegetable stock.

Instead of paying $2 – 3 per quart, it is really inexpensive: maybe a dollar for the vegetables in a batch? With vegetable broth, you can easily add moisture and flavor to so many things you cook. If you cook vegetables in stock instead of oil, you can decrease the amount of fat and calories in your food as well.

Now that you know how to make vegetable broth, you will be ready to make some homemade soup, like this 3 ingredient broccoli soup.

More Recipes You May Enjoy

• Spicy Lentil Chili for the Instant Pot
• Arroz Colorido – Colorful Mexican Rice: A Meal Prep Solution
• How to Make Cheesy Vegan Pizza with 00 Flour
• Stuffed Peppers with Butternut Squash and Quinoa

Homemade Vegetable Broth in the Instant Pot

Melissa Altman-Traub MS, RDN, LDN

Learn how to make fresh and delicious vegetable broth easily in the Instant Pot or stovetop. This broth adds moisture and flavor to many recipes and can be used for homemade soup.

5 from 1 vote

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 5 minutes mins

Cook Time 25 minutes mins

Time to build up and release pressure 30 minutes mins

Total Time 1 hour hr

Course Appetizer, Soup

Cuisine American

Servings 10

Calories 15 kcal

Equipment

• Instant Pot 6 quart Duo
• Cutting board
• Knife

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

• 10 cups water
• 2 cups vegetable scraps
• 1 carrot, roughly chopped
• ½ onion, roughly chopped
• 1 stalk celery, roughly chopped
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 handful fresh herbs

Instructions

 

• Pour water into the inner liner of the Instant Pot.
• Add vegetable scraps, carrot, onion, celery, and bay leaf to the water. Close the lid and set for 25 minutes on high.
• Allow the pressure to release naturally. Remove the lid and let the broth cool. Strain broth through a fine stariner.
• Pour into shallow containers for storage.

Notes

The nutrition estimate is from Spoonacular, which is based on the USDA FoodData Central. The actual nutrient content will vary based on the ingredients used.

You can use a variety of vegetable scraps like mushroom stems, string bean ends, zucchini peels, bell pepper trimmings, celery leaves, etc. Save them as you cook and store them in the freezer to use for your broth. It’s fine to use 1 – 3 cups of vegetable scraps for this recipe. 

For fresh herbs, I use a combination of parsley, basil, cilantro, or rosemary. Substitute with a teaspoon total of dried herbs if you don’t have fresh ones. Feel free to skip the bay leaf if you don’t have any.

To make broth on the stove, use a large pot. Bring the water to a boil and add the scraps, vegetables, and bay leaf. Reduce heat to a simmer. Cook for an hour or so. Turn off the flame and let it cool before straining. 

Nutrition

Calories: 15kcalCarbohydrates: 3gProtein: 1gFat: 0.004gSaturated Fat: 0.001gMonounsaturated Fat: 0.001gSodium: 0.2mgPotassium: 2mgFiber: 1gSugar: 1gVitamin A: 34IUVitamin C: 1mgCalcium: 1mgIron: 0.03mg

Keyword Broth, Vegan, Vegetables

Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

Join my new Plant-Based, Vegan, and Vegetarian Cooking Community Facebook group!

Have you tried this broth? Please let me know in the comments below: