The Best Stock Veggies For Sweeter Spring Flavors

If fresh fruits and vegetables are the main focal point of your recipe, there's nothing holding you back from using this same flavourful produce to craft a wonderfully sweet stock. To achieve a honeyed, homemade version, we won't sugar-coat the facts when we tell you that there's only a handful of veggies that should make their way into the stockpot. While vegetable-based stock often has a reputation for being bland, this isn't necessarily true. 

Even the most minimalist versions can contribute a world of flavor and enhance other ingredients in the process. Rather than focus on decadent and comforting umami that's perfect for colder months, opting to elevate the stock's sweeter side can be a great way to make the meat-free liquid more interesting for periods of warmer weather. Thankfully, adding a mild sweetness to stock is easy when using the right vegetables, namely those with a sugar-kissed flavor profile like corn and squash. 

Though it may seem like common sense, steer clear of bitter ingredients like cruciferous veggies or an excessive amount of skins and seeds when deciding which types of produce to simmer. Instead, select vegetables that have a higher content of sugar, as they will best impart maximum sweetness. To keep things short and sweet, corn cobs, chunks of carrots, and squash peels are the best crops to amplify honeyed nuances into stock. However, you can also develop delicately candied flavors by working with certain fruits. 

Often sweeter than most veggies, using the cores from fruits like pears or apples can be a creative solution to sweeten up stock that you may not have previously considered. To produce an especially rich, yet sweet vegetable stock, it's also wise to follow the method to make a brown stock, rather than white stock. To do this, simply roast or sauté pieces of finely chopped produce, before adding them to a stock pot and covering them with water to simmer. Along with deepening color, all of the caramelized goodness will be infused into the liquid, translating to an overall sweeter stock.