The chicken stock cube
Ingredients are listed from most to least by weight. Here's what you'll often find, in order:
Highlighted: salt leads, and chicken shows up near the end of the list, if at all.
- Salt is ingredient number one. One cube can carry a good chunk of a day's sodium, without any of the minerals or gelatine of a real broth.
- 621 is MSG and 635 is a booster that amplifies it. Together they create the savoury "meaty" taste that the small amount of actual chicken can't.
- Palm fat and maltodextrin bind the powder into a cube and bulk it out.
- Colour 150d is a caramel colour that gives the stock a "roasted" golden-brown look.
Slow-cooker bone broth
Salt, enhancers and palm fat in a foil wrapper
Bones, water, vegetables, herbs, salt. That's it.
The lazy method: after a roast chicken (pasture-raised if you can), put the frame in the slow cooker with an onion, a carrot, a celery stick, a bay leaf, a splash of apple cider vinegar and enough water to cover. Cook on low for 12–24 hours, strain, and season with salt to taste.
- A good broth wobbles like jelly once it's cold. That's the gelatine from the bones and joints, and it's a sign you've done it right.
- Freeze it in ice-cube trays or jars, and you've got your own "stock cubes" for months.
- No time? Look for refrigerated or frozen broths where bones and water are the first ingredients. A local butcher often sells bones for very little.
The Soups & Broths section of the directory, and Farmers & Butchers for bones, are good places to start.
The Sunday batch-cook
Most weeknight takeaway isn't about willpower. It happens at 6:30pm when you're tired and there's nothing ready. Give that moment a better default.
Pick one hour on Sunday. Get the broth going, roast a tray of vegetables, cook a pot of rice or potatoes, and boil half a dozen eggs. Four building blocks in the fridge turn into a different meal each night in ten minutes.
It's Dr. Diet, but it's also Dr. Quiet. Less weeknight decision-making means a calmer evening and an earlier night. Put some music on and get the household involved, and Dr. Happiness gets a turn too.
Make it stick: put it in the calendar like an appointment, and keep the first one small. Even one broth and one tray of veg is a win.