Instant Pot Vegetable Stock (No Salt Added)

This Instant Pot vegetable stock turns a bag of saved kitchen scraps into a deep, savory, completely salt-free base in 30 minutes of pressure cooking. You control every milligram of sodium, and it tastes worlds better than anything sold in a carton.

Most store-bought “low sodium” cartons still carry 500 to 600 mg of sodium per cup, and the regular versions can run over 900. When you make vegetable stock in the Instant Pot, that number drops to whatever the vegetables bring on their own — about 16 mg per cup. That is the whole reason this recipe lives in my freezer year-round.

It is also the cheapest thing in my kitchen. The onion ends, carrot peels, and celery bottoms that usually hit the trash become the entire ingredient list. Pressure cooking pulls flavor out of them in 30 minutes instead of the two hours a stovetop pot demands, and the sealed environment keeps every bit of aroma in the liquid instead of steaming it off into the room.

Why You Will Love This Recipe

• Total sodium control. Nothing is added. You salt the finished dish, not the base, which is exactly how restaurant kitchens do it.
• Free ingredients. A gallon bag of frozen scraps makes a full batch. Nothing gets wasted.
• Fast. Thirty minutes at high pressure does what 90 minutes to two hours does on the stovetop.
• Cleaner flavor. Sealed pressure cooking traps volatile aromatics that would otherwise evaporate, so the stock tastes brighter and more vegetal than a long simmer.
• Freezer friendly. Portion it into cubes and pull out exactly what a recipe needs.

Vegetable Stock vs. Vegetable Broth

The terms get used interchangeably on packaging, but there is a real difference worth knowing.

Stock is unseasoned. It is a cooking ingredient, built for depth and body, meant to be seasoned later by whatever dish it goes into. Broth is seasoned and salted, made to be sipped or eaten as-is.

What you are making here is genuinely stock. That is the point — it stays neutral so it can go into a risotto, a chowder, or a braise without pushing that dish over on salt. If you want to drink it straight, season a cup of it with salt and a squeeze of lemon just before serving.

Which Vegetable Scraps to Save (and Which to Skip)

Keep a gallon freezer bag going and add to it as you cook. When it is full, you have a batch.

Which Vegetable Scraps to Save (and Which to Skip)

Keep a gallon freezer bag going and add to it as you cook. When it is full, you have a batch.

Save these:

• Onion ends, and the papery skins — the skins add real amber color
• Carrot peels, tops, and stubby ends
• Celery bottoms, tops, and leaves
• Leek greens and the dark tops most recipes discard
• Mushroom stems and trimmings, which bring serious umami
• Parsley, thyme, and cilantro stems
• Garlic skins and cloves that got a little soft
• Corn cobs after the kernels come off — surprisingly sweet
• Fennel fronds and cores, in small amounts

Skip these:

• Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts — sulfur compounds turn the stock bitter and sour
• Beets, unless you want everything you cook to be magenta
• Potato peels in any real quantity — they release starch and make the stock cloudy and muddy
• Artichokes, which make everything taste oddly sweet
• Anything moldy, slimy, or past the point you would eat it. Bad scraps make bad stock.

Ingredients Needed

• Yellow onions (unpeeled, quartered): The aromatic backbone. Leaving the skins on is what gives homemade stock its golden color instead of a pale gray.
• Carrots (unpeeled): Natural sweetness that balances the savory notes. No need to peel — just scrub them well.
• Celery stalks: Earthy and slightly saline-tasting without any actual salt. Leaves included.
• Mushrooms: Optional but the single biggest upgrade here. They contribute glutamates, which read on the palate as savory depth — the thing you notice missing when you remove salt.
• Garlic cloves (smashed, skins on): Mellow, rounded depth.
• Parsley stems: All the herbal flavor of the leaves with more of it, and they are usually headed for the compost anyway.
• Bay leaves: Quiet aromatic complexity in the background.
• Whole black peppercorns: Gentle warmth. Whole, not ground, so the stock stays clear.
• Cold water: Starting cold lets flavor extract gradually as the pot comes up to temperature.

The Ratio That Matters

• Aim for roughly 4 to 5 cups of chopped vegetables or scraps per 10 cups of water. Less than that and the stock tastes thin; more and you are wasting produce for diminishing returns.
• One hard rule: never fill the Instant Pot past the ⅔ max fill line. Vegetables float and foam, and an overfilled pot can clog the steam valve. For a 6-quart pot, 10 cups of water plus vegetables is right at the limit.

How To Make Instant Pot Vegetable Stock

Step One: Add the onions, carrots, celery, mushrooms, garlic, parsley stems, bay leaves, and peppercorns to the Instant Pot inner pot. If you are using frozen scraps, add them straight from the freezer — no thawing needed.

Step Two: Pour in the cold water, making sure the vegetables are submerged and the total stays below the ⅔ max fill line.

Step Three: Lock the lid and set the valve to Sealing. Select Pressure Cook or Manual on high pressure and set the time to 30 minutes. The pot will take about 15 to 20 minutes to come up to pressure before the timer begins.

Step Four: When the cycle finishes, let the pot sit undisturbed for a full natural release, about 15 minutes. This is not a waiting step you can skip — flavor continues to extract during the slow depressurization, and it keeps the stock clear instead of churning it cloudy. Move the valve to Venting to release anything remaining.

Step Five: Set a fine-mesh strainer over a large bowl and pour the stock through. For a crystal-clear result, line the strainer with cheesecloth. Press gently on the solids with the back of a ladle — pressing hard forces particles through and clouds the stock.

Step Six: Let the stock cool to room temperature on the counter for no more than two hours, then refrigerate or freeze. Discard the spent vegetables — they have given up everything they had.

Recipe Tips

• Toast the aromatics for a darker stock. Run Sauté on high, add a teaspoon of oil, and let the onions and mushrooms brown for 5 to 6 minutes before adding everything else. It takes the stock from golden to deep amber and adds a roasted sweetness that stands up in French onion soup or a mushroom risotto.
• Do not salt it. Ever. The whole value of a no-salt-added stock is that it disappears into a dish without limiting you. Season the finished recipe instead.
• Skins on, always. Onion skins for color, garlic skins for mellow depth, carrot skins for earthiness. Just scrub everything first.
• Go easy on strong herbs. Rosemary and sage will dominate. A few sprigs of thyme or a handful of parsley stems is the right level.
• Make a concentrate. After straining, simmer the stock uncovered on Sauté until it reduces by half or more. Frozen concentrate cubes take up a quarter of the freezer space and you just add water back when you use them.
• Chill it, then skim. If anything cloudy settles overnight in the fridge, pour off the clear liquid from the top and leave the sediment behind.

Storing and Freezing

• Refrigerator: Store cooled stock in airtight containers for up to 4 days. Homemade stock has no preservatives, so treat it like fresh food.
• Freezer: Up to 6 months in freezer-safe containers, leaving an inch of headspace for expansion.
• Ice cube trays: The best method. Freeze, pop the cubes into a labeled bag, and grab two or three when a pan sauce needs deglazing. Standard cubes are about 2 tablespoons each.
• Label everything with the date. Frozen stock all looks the same by month three.

What To Use It In

This is the base I reach for constantly. It goes into Instant Pot corn chowder in place of the canned broth, and it is what keeps air fryer risotto from turning salty as the liquid cooks down and concentrates — a risk with any store-bought carton.

It also works as a one-for-one swap anywhere a recipe calls for vegetable or chicken broth. Try it in Instant Pot broccoli and cheddar cheese soup, where the cheese brings plenty of salt on its own, or in Instant Pot sausage and lentil soup and copycat Nordstrom tomato basil soup. If you make the toasted version described above, it is exactly what Longhorn French onion soup wants underneath all that cheese.

For everyday cooking, use it as the liquid in vegetarian Chinese fried rice, or to loosen the gravy in slow cooker chicken and dumplings and slow cooker matzo ball soup. It is also the fix for high-sodium shortcuts — if you normally build a dish around something like a Lipton onion soup mix copycat, swapping in unsalted stock lets you keep the flavor while dialing the salt back to where you want it.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long do you pressure cook vegetable stock? Thirty minutes at high pressure, followed by a natural release. Add about 15 to 20 minutes for the pot to reach pressure and 15 minutes for the release, so plan on roughly 70 minutes start to finish even though only 10 minutes of that is hands-on.

Should I use natural release or quick release? Natural release, always. A quick release violently agitates the liquid, which turns a clear stock cloudy and can spray sediment into the valve. The slow release also continues extracting flavor.

Can I use frozen scraps without thawing? Yes. Add them frozen. The pot will take a few extra minutes to reach pressure, but the result is identical.

Do I have to sauté the vegetables first? No. The recipe works perfectly with everything added raw. Browning is purely optional and gives you a darker, sweeter stock — worth doing when the stock is the star, skippable when it is just a background liquid.

Why did my stock turn out bitter? Almost always cruciferous vegetables. Broccoli stems, cabbage cores, cauliflower leaves, and Brussels sprout trimmings release sulfur compounds under pressure and will make an entire batch unusable. Keep them out of the scrap bag entirely.

Why is my stock cloudy? Usually potato peels, pressing too hard on the solids while straining, or a quick release. None of it affects the taste. Chill it overnight and pour the clear stock off the top.

Can I make this on the stovetop or in a slow cooker instead? Yes to both. On the stovetop, cover the vegetables with cold water, bring to a bare simmer, and hold it there uncovered for 90 minutes to 2 hours — never a rolling boil, which emulsifies impurities into the liquid and makes it cloudy. In a slow cooker, cook on low for 8 to 10 hours. Both take longer and lose more aroma to evaporation, but the results are good.

Is this really no salt added? Yes. Nothing salted goes in. The nutrition panel shows about 16 mg of sodium per cup, and all of it occurs naturally in the celery and carrots. For comparison, most cartons labeled “low sodium” contain 500 mg or more per cup.

Can I reuse the vegetables afterward? Not for eating — they are completely spent and texturally unpleasant. They compost well.

How much stock does one batch make? About 10 cups. You will lose a little to evaporation and absorption into the vegetables, so expect slightly under what you poured in.