How Many Beef Bouillon Cubes Per Cup of Water? A Detailed Guide

The simple answer is yes. Are they little chunks of flavor, big chunks of salt, or just a simple kitchen hack? Bouillon cubes are all of that. The commercial origins of bouillon go back to the Swiss Maggi corporations introduction of a product in 1907. But the true history of bouillon cubes themselves is much older than that. According to Discover Lewis, Merriweather Lewis (of “Lewis and Clark” fame) brought what he called “portable soup” on the famous landmark expedition in 1803. It was an “ancestor of the modern bouillon cube.” But it was humanitys shared love of broth that led to the popularity of the now-ubiquitous bouillon cube.

What is the difference between stock, broth, and bouillon? This will help you understand the bouillon cube and why it’s so popular. But there is one important difference between stock and broth: broth is made from meat (but not bones), while stock is made from vegetables and bones. This makes the liquids’ texture and taste very different, as well as how they can be used.

So, what is a bouillon? It is, essentially, broth dehydrated into a powder. It can come either in powdered form or condensed and compressed into a cube. Different bouillon manufacturers generally add additional ingredients to the powder, including salt and MSG.

Boost your stock with bouillon cubes

Making a stock recipe can be a very grounding experience. Put some bones in a pan and brown them. Then, add chopped onions, carrots, and celery to the pot. Add a little tomato paste and some herbs. Bring everything to a simmer and skim it every so often for at least six hours for chicken stock and up to eight hours for beef bones. The method of flavor extraction from the bones through the long cooking process characterizes stock.

So, yes, stock-making can be a rewarding endeavor and not a particularly difficult one. But it is, inarguably, a time-consuming enterprise. You would not do it every day unless youre a chef or have time on your hands.

This is where bouillon cubes can come in handy. When Ina Garten makes a chicken pot pie, she adds bouillon cubes to the chicken stock to make it taste better. But why not do a lot of the same thing with the stock? Instead of simmering it for six to eight hours, shorten the time and add some bouillon cubes. The flavor that those little cubes of dehydrated brothy goodness add more than makes up for what you might lose in the body of the stock.

Think of bouillon cubes as a spice rub or seasoning

Yes, bouillon cubes are great for turning water into broth, but they really shine when you realize they are a highly concentrated flavor cube that you can use anywhere you need to add more flavor. You can use that bouillon as a powder even though it comes in a cube form.

Perhaps the simplest and most direct way to do so is to grate the bouillon cube itself and sprinkle the resulting powder over the meat of your choice as a seasoning salt or spice rub before cooking. Or you could use the grated bouillon cube as a straight-up salt replacement for roasted vegetables. As Food Network Canada points out, some chefs see the benefit of scattering the stuff over foods to give them an extra kick of umami.

But grating bouillon cubes can also be a first step in creating your own umami-driven seasonings. Kwame Onwuachi, a former Top Chef contestant, makes his Nigerian mixed grill with ground bouillon cubes for the Suya spice blend. Or, grate in some beef bouillon and add some pepper. This will make a perfectly seasoned steak. You could toss a chicken breast with a cumin-spiked grated tomato bouillon cube for some distinctly Tex-Mex flair. For this crispy veal parmesan recipe, grind some Italian seasoning and add some grated chicken bouillon. This will make the perfect seasoning to go with the flour.

The mere fact bouillon cubes can be used as a substitute for, or even an improvement on, salt highlights the reality that they are little sodium bombs. Cravings in Amsterdam observes that a single bouillon cube can contain up to 1,000 milligrams of sodium, and a Wylers chicken bouillon cube, for example, contains 800 milligrams of sodium. To put that in perspective, the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions dietary guidelines for Americans recommend an intake of fewer than 2,300 milligrams of sodium per day. In other words, one bouillon cube can be over ⅓ of an individuals total recommended daily salt intake!

The good news is that there are now lower sodium bouillon cube alternatives. For example, Edward & Sons makes a plant-based “Not-Chickn” product with only 120 milligrams per serving, Herb-Ox also has a sodium-free version, and Knorr has introduced both reduced sodium and “Zero Salts” chicken bouillon cubes. Sadly, neither of those products is widely available in the United States, though Knorr does offer the Zero Salt chicken bouillon in powdered form.

The best thing you can do is know how much salt is in the bouillon cubes you are using for the food you are cooking. As a flavoring for mashed potatoes or as part of a sauce, you can use them as a side dish. Be aware of the sodium level and adjust your recipes accordingly.

Some of the sodium in bouillon, whether it’s a cube or something else, doesn’t come from table salt. Instead, it comes from MSG, those three letters that are generally feared and slandered. But monosodium glutamate is not, contrary to popular belief, evil. Really, the seasoning does make things taste better, and MSG can be used in lots of different ways since it’s just powdered umami.

That, not to put too fine a point on it, is a very good thing. Umami is delectable. Lots of your favorite foods already contain MSG. Indeed, per Ajinomoto, umami in Japanese means the “essence of deliciousness.” It makes everything it touches taste more intensely like itself. As Nobuyuki Matsuhisa, the celebrity Chef creator of the Nobu empire of restaurants puts it (per Shun Gate): “Umami is vital for creating delicious food.”

One particularly intriguing way of using bouillon to embrace the umami is to mix different types of bouillon. For example, mixing vegetable bouillon (which contributes guanylate) with chicken bouillon (which brings inosinate to the party) results in a profound umami effect that is seven to eight times as intense as is either alone, per the Umami Information Center. Another, possibly unexpected, benefit of combining the two different types of bouillon cubes (read: sources of umami) and the resulting synergistic effect is that it allows you to achieve the same result using less sodium.

What Are Bouillon Cubes? (15 Little Known Facts About This Popular Ingredient)