Kyl Haselbauer has 20 years of experience working in fine-dining and modernist kitchens, including Bar Cotto and Anchovies &amp; Olives in Seattle. He is also the owner of Bright Spot, a café and coffee shop in Seattle.

Kyl Haselbauer

8 bouillon cubes; 1 gallon stock (when reconstituted)

This recipe packs all the flavor of a well-made beef stock rich with gelatin into a 1-inch cube that’s ready at a moment’s notice to be used to make soups, stews, sipping broths, or sauces.These cubes are our new pantry secret weapon, and they blow away every other prepared or instant beef stock product at the store. They’ve got actual beefy flavor, from real beef (not autolyzed yeast extract combined with caramel coloring); and they have a ton of gelatin, which means the broth they produce tastes lip-smackingly good and actually has body. Unlike the bone broths some specialty stores have on offer, these cubes aren’t heavy on the aromatics, which make them much more versatile, appropriate for use in a wide variety of dishes and cuisines. If instant products and prepared options have a bunch of flaws, these cubes address each and every one of them, delivering the performance and flavor of a well-made stock, allowing you to put together incredible meals in minutes that taste like you’ve been working on them for hours.And that’s because you have been, really. Just like a well-made stock, these bouillon cubes have you do the labor on the front end, which allows you to reap the dual rewards of convenience and deliciousness on the back end. And while we could’ve made the stock that goes into these cubes a number of different ways—old-school bouillon made from just whole muscles; a classic stock made with roasted meaty bones and (maybe) a little tomato paste; a quicker version like our <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/beef-stock">beef stock made with ground beef and cow’s feet</a>—I wanted to try to incorporate some of the convenience and cost-efficiency that makes people buy instant stock products in the first place. The process had to be relatively simple, and it had to be inexpensive.So, I made a stock using browned ground beef (the 80/20 stuff you can find anywhere) and some standard stock aromatics—mirepoix, garlic, and black pepper. Then, I added a couple packets of gelatin (if you don’t eat pork, you’ll want to seek out bovine gelatin) to give the stock body it lacks without having to buy a bunch of bones or a cow’s foot, and I added a little MSG and salt, just to give it some savory oomph.It was delicious: The Maillard browning adds depth of flavor to the beefy taste of the stock, tempered by those aromatic vegetables and black pepper, and the stock has that mouth-coating textural quality that comes from a large amount of dissolved gelatin. It takes all of about three hours to make the stock and reduce it so it sets up into a firm block. Most of that time is hands-off, so it’s relatively convenient (super convenient once you have the reduced stock on hand), inexpensive (it costs less than boxed stock), and super tasty.Part of the reason it’s tasty is because of the fat. Careful readers will note that the recipe doesn’t call for defatting the stock at all. The fat, along with fat-soluble flavor compounds from the aromatics, is locked into the cubes, since the dissolved gelatin helps the fat emulsify into the stock as it reduces.And once you have these cubes on hand (and/or the <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/chicken-bouillon-cubes">chicken</a> and <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/pork-bouillon-cubes">pork</a> bouillon cubes I came up with), you can use them in the raft of recipes that I’ve developed to demonstrate these bouillon cubes’ versatility. Pan sauces, sipping broths, soups … you can use them wherever you’d use a store-bought stock, and the results will be incredible.EDITORS’ NOTE: This recipe was originally developed with 80/20 ground beef. Due to the variability in the proportion of meat to fat in ground beef blends, we have retested and adjusted the recipe to call for 90/10 ground beef, after some feedback from readers who had issues with too much fat causing the bouillon emulsion to break.

Ultimate Beef Bouillon Cubes