It's nice to have a couple killer vegan/vegetarian recipes for when you want to share a meal with those friends. This recipe for Vegan Stock is a great base on which to build more dishes. The secret to making a vegetable stock taste richer, is to use natural sources of glutamates (rich, meaty flavors). Both dried mushrooms and kombu (dried kelp) are an excellent source of glutamates that are natural fits for stock. As I'm making other dishes, I will save certain scraps in the freezer for stock. For this stock, I saved up some mushroom, celery, and leek scraps. Throw everything together and boil for a short while (bones in normal stock takes forever to extract).

The vegan stock tastes very rich and yet still aromatic due to it only being vegetables. The only thing that it lacks is the mouth feel you get from gelatin. However, it's a small price to pay for sticking to your morals, especially when the flavor is so good.