TeresaMom always had these mysterious little jars full of square wrapped cubes but I was never ever interested in using them. I kind of knew they were dissolved to make soup, but I just couldn’t see how that was appetizing at all.
If a recipe called for broth I used one of those cartons of broth you can buy from the grocery store. That made sense to me. Broth should be liquid, not made from dehydrated lumps of powder!
But there were problems. What if I didn’t need a whole carton? That stuff goes bad pretty fast once opened. It’s a waste to open up a whole carton when you only need a couple of tablespoons.
Then one day, when I was struggling to cook for dad the way mom used to, I called up my cousin to find out how to make southern style green beans. And it turns out the key to just about any type of southern vegetable – be it green beans or collard greens or black eyed peas – is a chicken bouillon cube!
Now I use bouillon for just about any recipe that calls for broth. I use it for hamburger steak and gravy, for marinating egg roll filling, for the sauce in bell pepper beef. I use it everywhere.
I primarily use chicken bouillon because I don’t really like the flavor of the beef ones. When I absolutely have to use beef flavoring I use beef better than bouillon. It’s a beef flavored paste that comes out of a jar. It dissolves really easily and I think the flavor is spot on.
During the pandemic it was so much easier to store the cubes of bouillon over the cartons of broth. We were shopping in bulk to limit trips out and the cubes didn’t expire nearly as quickly. Turns out mom really did know best!
I still make my own chicken broth from time to time, slow cooking it from a whole chicken in the crock pot. The chicken broth freezes nicely and can be used for savory soups and curries. But for quick weeknight suppers the bouillon cube is great!
