Make Homemade Vegetable Stock
How can homemade vegetable stock make your life and the world better? It’s one of the simplest ways to cut back on food waste—and to get more value out of the groceries you’re already buying. In 2025, conversations about sustainability are shifting from big-picture goals to the small, everyday habits that truly make a difference. Turning carrot tops, onion peels, and celery ends into flavorful stock is a powerful example: what once would have been trash now becomes the foundation for nourishing meals.
The stakes are high. According to the EPA, food waste still makes up over 30% of our available food supply, with the average American tossing hundreds of pounds of food each year. Not only does this squander money and resources, it also contributes to climate change when wasted food rots in landfills and releases methane. At the same time, millions of households across the U.S. face food insecurity. Choosing to reduce your own food waste doesn’t solve these systemic issues on its own—but it does shift demand, normalize mindful consumption, and lighten your personal footprint.
The benefits ripple outward. You save money by getting more meals out of the same groceries. You gain health by cooking with fresh, homemade stock that’s free of additives and excess sodium. And you build resilience by practicing the kind of resourcefulness our grandparents once relied on—an antidote to today’s disposable culture. All of this, from something as humble as soup, makes your kitchen a place where sustainability and nourishment go hand in hand.
Homemade Vegetable Stock Recipe
Let’s use up vegetable trimmings before relegating them to the compost by making vegetable stock from scraps. First, make space for an airtight, freezer-safe container in your freezer, and welcome it to its permanent new home. Just leave it there.
As you’re cooking, wash your vegetables thoroughly (as you normally do), and add your scraps to the container in the freezer. (If something is caked with dirt, you can try soaking it in cold water while you finish cooking; if it doesn’t come out, though, don’t use it.) And while you’re cutting up veggies for your meal, take a second to glance skeptically at the contents of your crisper drawer. Is anything still good but getting to the edge? Wash it, chop it, and add it to the stock container in the freezer.
For your vegetable stock recipe, you can use:
Asparagus trimmings
Beets
Bell pepper stems and seeds
Carrot tips and root ends
Celery trimmings
Corn cobs (our favorite)
Ginger peels
Garlic, including the skins
Green bean trimmings
Herbs: err on the side of the more delicate ones like parsley, and be careful to use stronger resinous ones like rosemary only in small quantities. And keep in mind that if you use something very strong like cilantro, your stock is going to taste strongly of cilantro. (TBH, that sounds pretty awesome to us, but maybe not for every purpose.)
Mushroom stems
Onion peels and trimmings
Pea pods
Potato trimmings and peels (including sweet potatoes)
Squash trimmings
Tomato parts
Probably not cruciferous vegetables like broccoli
The next time you need stock, transfer the frozen veggies to a stock pot. It’s okay to pick and choose a little for flavor; that frozen cilantro can wait until next week if necessary. Just don’t let it thaw and then refreeze it.
Cover the vegetables with water. Bring the stock to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat and let simmer for about 10 minutes. (Note: If you’re using fresh veggies instead of frozen, this will take longer—let it simmer until the veggies are soft, about an hour depending on what they are.) Strain it and (finally) compost the scraps. Use the homemade vegetable stock to make dinner.
