I am a firm believer in broths for their gut-supporting, extremely tasty, and nourishing qualities. You can pack so much nutrition in each little sip. Adding a myriad of herbs to our broth base is the perfect vehicle for incorporating wellness into our modern lives.
There are so many ways to make an herbal broth. I suggest getting in the kitchen to experiment on your own. Trust your intuition for what your body is currently craving nutritionally. Be creative and use what you have on hand because this is also a sustainable way to use up all the food scraps from meals throughout the month. If you have the space in your freezer, save all your carrot ends, onion tops, apple cores, celery bulbs, mushrooms, and herb stems in a freezer-safe container over time and pull out all those saved ingredients when it comes time to make the broth. For more inspiration on what to add, see the list below.
Now the question is why make an herbal broth? Well, it makes a wonderful sipping beverage with nutritional benefits, a flavorful main ingredient for cooking meals such as soups, stews, or sauces, and it enhances the taste of grains like rice, quinoa, or couscous. You can even splash some in a savory stir-fry dish.
Prepare the broth either in a pot on the stove or add all the ingredients and let them slowly cook in a crock pot. I do love using a crock pot to slow-cook for convenience purposes. The broth ingredients are easy to throw together in the morning or before bed. When preparing on the stove, simmer on low for at least 20 minutes and up to 1 hour. Start with the vegetables, roots, mushrooms, and greens first. Add in the aromatic herbs at the end, particularly more delicate plant parts such as flowers, leaves, and stems, because you don’t want to boil those. You could even take the pot off the heat and add them, letting them infuse for up to an hour. If you do add them in earlier in the cooking process, make sure it's at a very low simmer while cooking.
When finishing up the broth, turn off the heat and let cool before straining. I generally strain broths through a muslin cloth or a fine mesh strainer. Make sure to strain out all the plant material because it can cause spoilage faster if left in.
You can store your broth in the fridge in a mason jar for a few days. One of my favorite methods is to pour the broth into ice cube trays to freeze for later to have these prepped and ready for a busy time or sick day. No one wants to do anything when they’re sick, so having something on hand to heat up quickly is very convenient and helps nourish an unwell body.
Now let’s talk about flavors. For a broth with more earthy, nutty tones packed with nutrition and potential immune support, add fresh or dried mushrooms. Mushrooms also have fiber and protein that will instantly enhance the value of this herbal broth. My personal favorites are shiitake, lion’s mane, and reishi. Use what you have on hand. Use what’s in season and local to you, when you can. There’s a mushroom farm local to my area that I love to visit their booth at the farmer’s market to grab my ingredients for the week.
Besides the tried-and-true culinary herb classics like parsley, sage, thyme, cilantro, rosemary, oregano, and basil, some of my favorite herbs are stinging nettles (Urtica dioca) and oatstraw (Avena sativa) for their vitamin and mineral qualities. I would do both of those as fresh or dried ingredients. When adding mineral herbs, I also like to add a splash of apple cider vinegar to help draw out those minerals.
Include roots like ginger for its spicy, warming aromatic qualities and turmeric for its potent musky-peppery flavor that adds a gorgeous golden hue to your final product. Lemongrass is one of my favorite annuals to grow in my garden and it makes a wonderful addition to the herbal broth for that lemony citrus flavor. Another favorite addition is calendula flowers. They brighten the broth with their golden petals and support the digestive system.
Some ingredients can make herbal broth less appealing, such as bitter-flavored herbs and vegetables. Keep Brassica vegetables (Broccoli, Cabbage, Kale, etc.) out of the broths unless they will be added into a strongly flavored soup straight away. Also, avoid starchy vegetables like potatoes that tend to make the broth cloudy. Woody culinary herbs like rosemary, thyme, and sage can get bitter and overpowering, so use them gently.
As always, remember when you consume this delicious and nutritious herbal broth, honor all the farmers, foragers, and gardeners, including your wonderful self, who worked hard to share these herbs with you.
Here’s an example recipe I create often. The ingredients are a good baseline, but I’ll go with what’s on hand, in season, local to my area, or what I’ve preserved for later. This is a smaller batch. I never measure my ingredients and throw in what I feel at that moment. The idea is to have a nice thick slurry with all your herbs and veggies. Happy cooking!
Ingredients
Directions
You may also enjoy:
Topics: Culinary, Recipes, Herbalism, Specialty Ingredients
Alex Queathem Payne is a clinical herbalist and educator. She and her husband co-founded Tending the Wildflowers, a botanical sanctuary offering various herbal programs and classes on-site including an herbal immersion program and a beginner botany and ecology program. The sanctuary is recognized through the United Plant Savers Botanical Sanctuary Network. They grow a myriad of medicinal herbs and native at-risk plants. They also keep bees. Alex attended the three-year program through the Columbines School of Botanical Studies. She is the administrator and an instructor for the school, proceeded through teaching training, and is an instructor at the school. She is currently enrolled in the Clinical Foundations Mentorship with Sovereignty Herbs and has a small clinical practice.
.jpg?width=1080&name=2023%20(1).jpg "Mountain Rose Herbs 2023 Impact Report")
I am a firm believer in broths for their gut-supporting, extremely tasty, and nourishing qualities. You can pack so much nutrition in each little sip. Adding a myriad of herbs to our broth base is the perfect vehicle for incorporating wellness into our modern lives.
There are so many ways to make an herbal broth. I suggest getting in the kitchen to experiment on your own. Trust your intuition for what your body is currently craving nutritionally. Be creative and use what you have on hand because this is also a sustainable way to use up all the food scraps from meals throughout the month. If you have the space in your freezer, save all your carrot ends, onion tops, apple cores, celery bulbs, mushrooms, and herb stems in a freezer-safe container over time and pull out all those saved ingredients when it comes time to make the broth. For more inspiration on what to add, see the list below.
Now the question is why make an herbal broth? Well, it makes a wonderful sipping beverage with nutritional benefits, a flavorful main ingredient for cooking meals such as soups, stews, or sauces, and it enhances the taste of grains like rice, quinoa, or couscous. You can even splash some in a savory stir-fry dish.
Prepare the broth either in a pot on the stove or add all the ingredients and let them slowly cook in a crock pot. I do love using a crock pot to slow-cook for convenience purposes. The broth ingredients are easy to throw together in the morning or before bed. When preparing on the stove, simmer on low for at least 20 minutes and up to 1 hour. Start with the vegetables, roots, mushrooms, and greens first. Add in the aromatic herbs at the end, particularly more delicate plant parts such as flowers, leaves, and stems, because you don’t want to boil those. You could even take the pot off the heat and add them, letting them infuse for up to an hour. If you do add them in earlier in the cooking process, make sure it's at a very low simmer while cooking.
When finishing up the broth, turn off the heat and let cool before straining. I generally strain broths through a muslin cloth or a fine mesh strainer. Make sure to strain out all the plant material because it can cause spoilage faster if left in.
You can store your broth in the fridge in a mason jar for a few days. One of my favorite methods is to pour the broth into ice cube trays to freeze for later to have these prepped and ready for a busy time or sick day. No one wants to do anything when they’re sick, so having something on hand to heat up quickly is very convenient and helps nourish an unwell body.
Now let’s talk about flavors. For a broth with more earthy, nutty tones packed with nutrition and potential immune support, add fresh or dried mushrooms. Mushrooms also have fiber and protein that will instantly enhance the value of this herbal broth. My personal favorites are shiitake, lion’s mane, and reishi. Use what you have on hand. Use what’s in season and local to you, when you can. There’s a mushroom farm local to my area that I love to visit their booth at the farmer’s market to grab my ingredients for the week.
Besides the tried-and-true culinary herb classics like parsley, sage, thyme, cilantro, rosemary, oregano, and basil, some of my favorite herbs are stinging nettles (Urtica dioca) and oatstraw (Avena sativa) for their vitamin and mineral qualities. I would do both of those as fresh or dried ingredients. When adding mineral herbs, I also like to add a splash of apple cider vinegar to help draw out those minerals.
Include roots like ginger for its spicy, warming aromatic qualities and turmeric for its potent musky-peppery flavor that adds a gorgeous golden hue to your final product. Lemongrass is one of my favorite annuals to grow in my garden and it makes a wonderful addition to the herbal broth for that lemony citrus flavor. Another favorite addition is calendula flowers. They brighten the broth with their golden petals and support the digestive system.
Some ingredients can make herbal broth less appealing, such as bitter-flavored herbs and vegetables. Keep Brassica vegetables (Broccoli, Cabbage, Kale, etc.) out of the broths unless they will be added into a strongly flavored soup straight away. Also, avoid starchy vegetables like potatoes that tend to make the broth cloudy. Woody culinary herbs like rosemary, thyme, and sage can get bitter and overpowering, so use them gently.
As always, remember when you consume this delicious and nutritious herbal broth, honor all the farmers, foragers, and gardeners, including your wonderful self, who worked hard to share these herbs with you.
Here’s an example recipe I create often. The ingredients are a good baseline, but I’ll go with what’s on hand, in season, local to my area, or what I’ve preserved for later. This is a smaller batch. I never measure my ingredients and throw in what I feel at that moment. The idea is to have a nice thick slurry with all your herbs and veggies. Happy cooking!
Ingredients
Directions
You may also enjoy:
Topics: Culinary, Recipes, Herbalism, Specialty Ingredients
Alex Queathem Payne is a clinical herbalist and educator. She and her husband co-founded Tending the Wildflowers, a botanical sanctuary offering various herbal programs and classes on-site including an herbal immersion program and a beginner botany and ecology program. The sanctuary is recognized through the United Plant Savers Botanical Sanctuary Network. They grow a myriad of medicinal herbs and native at-risk plants. They also keep bees. Alex attended the three-year program through the Columbines School of Botanical Studies. She is the administrator and an instructor for the school, proceeded through teaching training, and is an instructor at the school. She is currently enrolled in the Clinical Foundations Mentorship with Sovereignty Herbs and has a small clinical practice.
