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)

<a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/pressure-cooked-brown-chicken-stock">Chicken stock</a> is a foundational ingredient in most kitchens, because it’s flavorful, inexpensive to make, and as useful for making soups and sauces as it is for a tasty pot of rice. This recipe for chicken bouillon cubes takes chicken stock’s virtues and dials them up, resulting in a deeply flavorful, super versatile ingredient that’s also incredibly convenient to use. There’s really no comparison to be made between these bouillon cubes and the prepared or instant products you can find at the store. Unlike instant products, these chicken bouillon cubes contain a hefty amount of gelatin, which means they can be used to produce silky pan sauces and lip-smacking soups. They also have a lot of actual chicken flavor: When reconstituted, they taste like chicken soup, not autolyzed yeast extract. Unlike prepared products, they have a minimum of aromatics steeped into them, which means they’re more versatile, and you can use them in a range of applications and cuisines.I did borrow some of the elements of instant chicken stock products. MSG, for one, which we love using. In fact, when we do use instant stock products, like chicken bouillon powder in our <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/flour-corn-hybrid-tortilla">Leveled Up Flour Tortillas</a>, it’s primarily because they contain MSG. And, of course, I borrowed the cube form: It’s cute; it’s convenient for splitting up into equal sized portions; and it’s easy to produce with an ice cube tray, which is a standard issue piece of equipment in any kitchen that has a freezer, where the cubes will keep for six months.These bouillon cubes are more flavorful than instant or prepared stock products in part because I use some good, if simple, technique to make the base stock. Browning ground chicken thighs produces a whole lot of flavorful compounds thanks to <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/mastering-the-maillard-reaction">Maillard reactions</a>, and chicken thighs contain a fair amount of connective tissue (which converts to gelatin when heated in water) and, crucially, fat. That fat is important for two reasons: Instant products and prepared stocks typically are defatted to increase their shelf life, which is a shame because chicken fat is delicious in its own right; and fat can dissolve flavorful and aromatic compounds that water can’t. After making the stock, I add a relatively large amount of powdered gelatin. Gelatin is what gives (good) stock body, and it’s produced by heating collagen in the presence of water. To get an equivalent concentration of gelatin using traditional stock-making methods, you’d have to buy a lot of collagen-rich chicken parts—cartilage, skin, and tendons all have a lot of gelatin, which is why chicken backs and feet (and heads) are great for stock. You’d have to then cook the chicken parts for a while—hours and hours on the stovetop, an hour or so in a pressure cooker—in enough water to cover them, in order to fully convert as much collagen into gelatin as you can. The gelatin is important for giving the stock body, but it’s also important because it helps the stock to emulsify and bind up any chicken fat, so each cube has about the same amount of fat, as well as fat-soluble flavors and aromas. In turn, once reconstituted, the stock will have speckles of fat, which are great for leeching out fat-soluble compounds from stuff like herbs, which you can steep into the stock to make a perfectly seasoned <a href="chicken-bouillon-sipping-broth">sipping broth</a>.The only issue with using powdered gelatin is that a lot of gelatin out there is derived from pork. If you for any reason avoid pork products, you’ll have to seek out bovine gelatin.While these cubes can’t replace a well-made stock in every application, for quick weeknight meals and on-the-fly cooking, nothing matches their combination of flavor and convenience.

Ultimate Chicken Bouillon Cubes