Table of contents
Vegetable broth without added salt is healthier for our organism than commercial (instant) broths, which often contain far too high a salt content.
Use in the kitchen
Salt-free vegetable stock is used in health-conscious cooking in the same way as normal vegetable stock. It is used to season risotto , millet risotto , sauces, braised dishes, stews and soups . Side dishes cooked in vegetable stock such as rice , quinoa , millet and couscous get a fine, well-rounded taste.
The salt contained comes naturally from the ingredients used. Vegetable broth without added salt allows you to determine the salt content yourself by adding more. Once your taste buds have adjusted (takes around 3 months), you no longer need to add any salt.
How do bouillon, broth and stock differ? With broth, you cook vegetables in water until they are cooked. At the end, you can add salt to the broth, but you don't have to. It is thin and you can eat it plain or use it for other purposes. Bouillon is a strong broth (concentrated broth) that thickens when it is cooked for a longer period of time. With vegetable stock , you cook the vegetables in water. You don't eat the vegetables, but separate them from the stock after cooking. That's why "vegetable waste" such as trimmings and peels, and possibly herbs and spices, are suitable for making stock. You don't eat stock plain, but use it as a base for soups and sauces. It has a very intense flavor.
It is important that you boil the vegetables in cold water without salt. This is the only way to ensure that the flavor is transferred into the water. The water should not be boiling, but only simmering gently to preserve the flavor.
Making your own vegetable broth without salt
Vegetable broth is particularly aromatic when you use fresh vegetables. Put the cleaned and chopped vegetables in a pot of cold water. After boiling briefly, reduce the heat and simmer the broth in a covered pot until it reaches the desired strength. You can then eat the broth with the vegetables or strain it for further use.
In the supermarket you can buy soup vegetables (soup greens), which usually contain carrots , celeriac , leeks , savoy cabbage and onions . You can add fresh herbs ( parsley , lovage , thyme ) and spices (peppercorns , cloves , bay leaves ) to the vegetables. Mushrooms , porcini mushrooms and shiitake mushrooms give the soup a hearty taste. A small chili pepper adds some spice if needed.
Beetroot , pak choi , broccoli , white cabbage and kohlrabi are less suitable for making vegetable broths, as they often make the broth bitter. Starchy vegetables such as corn , potatoes , pumpkin and sweet potatoes make the vegetable broth cloudy.
Recipes for liquid vegetable broths can be found under the following links: vegan vegetable broth and mushroom vegetable broth .
If you want to keep the vegetable stock for longer, you can pour it through a sieve into a second pot and then fill it into sterile screw-top jars while it is still hot. Strictly speaking, a (strongly) boiled vegetable stock without salt and after the solid components (vegetables, herbs, mushrooms) have been removed is called vegetable stock .
Making your own instant vegetable stock
Granular or powdered vegetable stock without added salt is easy to make at home. You can also prepare larger quantities, as the stock can be stored for a long time. You can also pay strict attention to organic quality. The easiest option is to buy freeze-dried soup vegetables and grind them in a high-performance blender until they reach the desired grain size.
The vegetable broth is much more aromatic if you use fresh vegetables. Put the cleaned and diced vegetables in a high-performance blender or a food processor. Alternatively, you can grate or chop them very finely. Dry the vegetables in the oven (50 °C) or in the dehydrator (40-50 °C) for several hours and then allow them to cool well. The dehydrator can also be used to preserve heat-sensitive vitamins at mild temperatures. Finally, finely shred again in the blender. Make sure that the powder is really dry and store it in a screw-top jar.
A recipe for instant vegetable broth can be found at the following link: Instant vegetable broth with carrots, celery and leeks .
Vegan recipe for potato salad without added salt
Ingredients (for 4 people): 1 kg potatoes (waxy) , 1 onion , 1 tbsp mustard , 4 tbsp white wine vinegar (or white balsamic vinegar ), 200 ml vegetable stock without added salt,black pepper , fresh chives , fresh parsley .
Preparation: Boil the potatoes, peel them and leave to cool. Then cut them into thin slices and put them in a large bowl. Peel the onion and chop finely. Mix the mustard with the white wine vinegar and vegetable stock and season with black pepper. Carefully mix the mixture and the onions into the potato slices. Wash the chives and parsley and drain well. Chop finely and mix into the potato salad. Cover and leave to stand for at least 30 minutes. The potato salad tastes particularly delicious if you leave it in the fridge for a few hours before serving.
Vegan recipes with vegetable broth without salt (saltless) can be found under the note: " Recipes that have the most of this ingredient ".
| Not only vegans or vegetarians should read this: Vegans often eat unhealthily. Avoidable nutritional mistakes . |
Purchasing - Storage
Vegetable broth (also called vegetable bouillon) can be found in the supermarket in different consistencies. In addition to powder, you can also buy soup cubes (stock cubes, bouillon cubes).
Vegetable broth without added salt can be found at major retailers such as Coop , Migros , Rewe and Billa . Denner , Volg , Spar , Aldi , Lidl , Edeka and Hofer do not have "salt-free" vegetable broths in their standard range. Health food stores and organic supermarkets such as Denn's Biomarkt and Alnatura sometimes offer "reduced salt" or "salt-free" vegetable broths. Online retailers are also a good source for salt-free vegetable broths or vegetable broths with little salt (low-salt).
Before buying a product, you should read the ingredients list and nutritional table. Some products do not contain salt, but they contain a lot of other additives, such as flavor enhancers (including yeast extract ), stabilizers (maltodextrin), starch, gluten, flavors and sugar.
The availability of vegetable broth without added salt varies depending on the size of the store, catchment area, etc. Our recorded food prices for the DA-CH countries can be found above under the ingredient image - and by clicking on them you can see their development at various suppliers.
Storage tips:
Powder or granules for vegetable broth can be stored for several months if kept dry and protected from light. Cooked vegetable broth has a similar shelf life to other canned foods.
Homemade liquid vegetable broth with a little salt (filled in jars) can be stored in the refrigerator for a few days. For a longer shelf life, it should be pasteurized or sterilized.
Ingredients - Nutritional values - Calories
The values given in the nutritional table correspond to a vegetable broth made from a low-salt product. A vegetable broth without added salt is extra low in salt. The salt contained comes naturally from the ingredients used.
The energy content of this vegetable broth is only 15 kcal per 100 g. It is almost fat and protein free. The carbohydrate content is 3.6 g per 100 g. The salt content is low at 41 mg/100 g. This corresponds to only 1.7% of the maximum recommended daily intake. Vegetable broth contains few vitamins and minerals. 1
The complete ingredients of vegetable broth without salt, the coverage of the daily requirement and comparison values with other ingredients can be found in our nutrient tables. In the article Nutrients explained you will get a detailed insight into the topic.
Effects on health
Homemade vegetable broth made from 100 percent vegetables scores points for its naturalness. In addition to a very low sugar and sodium content that occurs naturally in vegetables, it does not contain any added flavors, flavor enhancers (glutamate, yeast extract), preservatives, fillers or added salt or sugar.
Vegetable broth without added salt helps reduce sodium consumption. An unbalanced high salt consumption is associated with an increased risk of hypertension (high blood pressure), increased cardiovascular risks and other organ-damaging secondary diseases. 6,7 For this reason, the WHO recommends keeping sodium intake below 2 g per day, which corresponds to less than 5 g of salt per day (≈ ¾ tsp). 8
Dangers - Intolerances - Side effects
Celery is contained in most vegetable broths and is one of the 14 main allergens. If you are sensitive to celery, we recommend reading the list of ingredients in the vegetable broth carefully or leaving out celery altogether when preparing your own broth.
Instant vegetable broths can contain yeast extract as a flavor enhancer. Yeast extract is an industrially modified ingredient and unhealthy in large quantities. For a long time it was considered the better alternative to artificially produced glutamate. Yeast extract is now also controversial because of the glutamic acid it contains. This has a similar effect to glutamate and blocks the feeling of satiety, so that we eat more than necessary. 2,3 Organic yeast extract is not really any better either and we recommend using natural herbs and spices to improve and intensify the flavor. Yeast extract is not a food additive and does not have to be officially labeled as a flavor enhancer, unlike industrially produced monosodium glutamate (MSG) E 621 or other glutamates in isolated form. 4 Even products with the EU organic seal 5 may contain yeast extract. However, glutamate is prohibited there.
Ecological footprint - animal welfare
Commercial vegetable broths have a CO 2 footprint of approximately 1.13 - 5.03 kg CO₂e/kg. 9 This greenhouse potential can be roughly compared with organic tomatoes (1.1 kg CO2eq/kg) and whole milk (1.4) to fish from aquaculture (5.1). 17 The salt in these soups has a small CO 2 footprint (0.05 - 0.22 kg CO₂eq/kg). 16
The Tagesspiegel in cooperation with AYCE.earth offers the possibility to calculate the CO 2 footprint of your own recipes on its website (see sources). 11 We tried this out with our recipe for vegan vegetable stock :
A standard portion of our homemade broth, i.e. 33% of the daily nutrient requirement, produces 319 g of CO 2 . If you convert the greenhouse gas potential to the calorie content, you get 621 g of CO 2 per 500 kcal. This means that the vegetable broth produces 38% fewer CO 2 equivalents than the average of the foods examined. The soup can therefore be classified as very climate-friendly. 11
While vegetable and chicken broth are in the "green" range, beef broth falls into the category 'These foods worsen our carbon footprint'. 12
We were unable to find any specific data on the water footprint . We were only able to find one study on the water footprint of gazpacho. This cold Spanish soup consists of tomatoes ,pepper , onion , cucumber , garlic , olive oil and vinegar . The water footprint was 580.5 l/l of soup. 10 For comparison: the global average water consumption per kilogram of vegetables is 322 liters, for fruit 962 liters, for eggs 3,265 liters and for beef a remarkable 15,415 liters. 13
Detailed explanations of various sustainability indicators (such as ecological footprint, CO2 footprint, water footprint) can be found here .
Animal welfare - species protection
Pay attention to organic certificates when buying. Chemical substances used in conventional agriculture not only have negative effects on our health, 15 but also on all other living creatures. We are currently experiencing a critical loss of biodiversity. The ecosystem services (e.g. pollination, decomposition and formation of substances, ...) of the various species are of enormous importance to us humans. In the EU, 24.5% of endangered species are threatened by agricultural pollutants such as pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. 14
Worldwide occurrence
Vegetable stock and vegetable broth are used worldwide. Depending on the region and season, they are made from different combinations of ingredients and with a lot or a little salt. Root vegetables, herbs and mushrooms are usually used. For an Asian-inspired vegetable broth, you can also use ginger , lemongrass or Thai basil (Horapa) .
Further information
Commercially available vegetable broth consists mainly of salt, fat, seasoning, flavour enhancers and only a small amount of vegetables. The vegetable content of conventional vegetable broth products is in many cases less than 10%. In vegetable stock cubes it is often only 1-3%. 2
The first soup cubes came onto the market in 1884. It was not until the 1980s that organic manufacturers produced the first vegetarian or vegan vegetable stock cubes. 2
Alternative names
Vegetable stock is often colloquially called vegetable bouillon. In English it is called vegetable broth, if it contains little salt you will often read the addition "low sodium" or "no salt" for salt-free vegetable stock. Vegetable stock is the name for vegetable stock .
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