Bouillon is Better than Broth

Because frankly, I have better things to do with my time than boil soup stock, and better things to do with my money than buy canned broth. Not to mention the fact that homemade broth ruins all those vegetables, and you have to throw them away. That, plus the short shelf life, is a recipe (heh heh) for waste.

I hate waste. Can you tell? Wasted time, wasted money, wasted ingredients. Hate, hate, hate.

A good quality bouillon tastes as good as canned broth (to me), at a fraction of the price AND a fraction of the pantry space. When your kitchen is as small as mine (remember your college dorm room? About 1/4 that size), pantry space is at a premium.

Also, and people don't often realize this, bouillon can be mixed mixed to any strength. Ordinary recipes call for broth to be boiled down to make it stronger (a waste of time!), but with bouillon, you can skip that step and just mix the broth the strength you want it! Example: Recipe calls for 2 cups of broth to be boiled down to 1 cup. Instead, add 1 cup water and 2 cups' worth of bouillon.

Furthermore, bouillon can be mixed with anything, not just water. When a recipe calls for, say, a cup of half-and-half (for creaminess) and a cup of broth (for flavor), you can instead mix the bouillon into TWO cups of 2% milk, and the result is not only better-tasting, but healthier, too. (I don't like wasting calories, either. If I'm going to have cream, it's going to be ICE cream, not chowder.)

I use this brand, which is ironically named Better Than Bouillon.

Here is a recipe to get you started thinking creatively about bouillon.

Swedish-Style Gravy - Great on IKEA's Swedish meatballs and way less fatty than their own gravy!

2 cups milk
1/4 cup flour
2 tsp Better than Bouillon beef flavor
1 tbsp butter

Whisk the flour into cold milk. Then heat over medium-high heat, stirring constantly. When it's warm, add the bouillon. When it bubbles, cook and stir for another 20 seconds, then remove from heat and drop in the butter. Whisk vigorously until the butter melts.

Incidentally: Adding cold butter to finished sauces is called "mounting" the sauce, which I think is hilarious. I do this instead of making a roux because it imparts the buttery flavor with less butter. A roux would have required at least twice as much butter, maybe more. Authentic French cooking uses this method to add MORE butter, essentially over-saturating the sauce with butter to make it hold more than it could have otherwise by emulsifying it. Oh, those crazy French!

Enjoy!