Monday, January 11, 2010

Better than Bouillion

Since we have been making a lot of soup, we've been using a lot of vegetable broth. I've never had success making it from scratch, and we have enough freezer space problems as it is, so we use Better than Bouillion jarred broth concentrate and love it. The recommended reconstitution rate is 1 tsp in 8 oz of water, but we usually make it half-strength so we can control the saltiness of our dishes more easily. The six-ounce jar usually lasts us for six or more months. In addition to the standard vegetable base, they have a really excellent mushroom base for making mushroom risotto or other mushroom dishes, and they even have vegetarian beef- and chicken-flavored bases. We've tried them and really didn't think there was a point to stocking all the different flavors, but if you're really craving the chicken or beef broth flavor, you could try those. They have regular meat-based ones, as well. I feel like an ad, but it is a pretty good product and much better than keeping a bunch of canned broth around or realizing you don't have any when you want to make a soup. Water-based soups can be good, too, but lots of soups really benefit from a nice broth. What do you do for broth?

3 comments:

Jamie said...

Lately we just by Swanson vegetable broth, but we used to make a vegetable stock that we liked a lot. The recipe comes from University of Illinois Extension in connection with a bunch of pumpkin recipes. Here it is:
-seeds and strings from the pumpkin
-3 crisp, flavorful apples, quartered
-3 cups pumpkin puree
-1 head garlic
-1 large onion, quartered
-zest of 1/2 orange
-1 1/2 teaspoons salt
-6 cups water
put all the ingredients together in large pot. Bring to boil and simmer 45 minutes. Let cool 30 minutes. Strain and discard solids. If Arlynda happened to be making an apple pie at the same time we would throw those apple peelings in too.

Evelyn said...

That looks really good. Can you use it for any vegetable soup recipes, or does it work better with certain flavors, like squash or onion?

Jamie said...

I've only used it for pumpkin soup, but...I don't know. You could try it with other flavors and see how it works.