
15/03/2025
New at Box Divvy: natural stock
What makes a good stock? Bones, vegetables and …time. Put a leftover chicken carcass in a large pan of water, add roughly chopped onion, garlic, carrots and celery, season to taste, and simmer for oh, at least 5 hours and ideally 8 hours. But who has the time these days?
Which is why most people use stock cubes or prepacked liquid stock.
There are just a few issues with supermarket stock:
Have you ever checked out the ingredient list on a pack of stock cubes? Take Massell Chicken Stock, one of the most popular brands – it ain’t pretty:
Sea Salt. So far, so good.
Rice Flour: uh?
Dextrose: a sugar derived (usually) from corn, and if you want to spot Ultra Processed Foods, dextrose is a dead give-away
Cane Sugar. Really? Isn’t it sweet enough from the dextrose?
Yeast Extract. A common flavouring – considered safe (but not an ingredient common in most domestic kitchens)
Natural Vegetable Flavours. Who knows…
Dehydrated Vegetables (Celery, Carrot, Parsley)
Potassium Chloride: this is used as a sodium (salt) substitute, but has a bitter taste
Vegetable Oil: most likely palm oil.
Turmeric Ground Madras: to give it a golden/yellow colour.
But where’s the chicken?? Clearly, even the Massel stock cube is an UPF, made from mostly industrial ingredients, best avoided if you had access to something better. Such as…
Campbell’s Real Stock? Really, it tastes like…nothing, even though it’s largely made from chicken, vegetables and water. And a ton of salt. The Guardian Taste Panel agrees: they gave Campbell’s a score of 3 out of 10, well behind Massel at 7.
As me how you can get yours today!! 😀