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Make Your Own Bouillon

AngieMohr

Better Than Bouillon is convenient, but it’s still a processed paste: salt, sugar or corn syrup solids, hydrolyzed soy/corn protein, “flavoring,” and often those extra umami salts that act like MSG even when the label says “no added MSG.” Even organic Better Than Bouillon still lists organic maltodextrin (plus cane sugar, yeast extract, potato starch, and “natural flavor”) on the chicken and several other bases. Organic just means the starch source wasn’t sprayed with the usual chemicals. It does not mean “this is food.” Maltodextrin is still a refined filler that spikes blood sugar and shows up in products that want to look clean while behaving like processed food.
You can make something that actually tastes like food and keeps just as easily.
Fridge paste
This is the German-style vegetable concentrate: real veg + salt as the preservative. No seed oils, no syrups, no mystery proteins.
Rough batch (makes a couple of small jars):
  • 2–3 carrots
  • 1 onion or leek
  • Celery or celery root
  • A tomato or a spoon of tomato paste
  • A few garlic cloves
  • Handful of parsley stems + whatever herbs you have (thyme, rosemary, bay)
  • Optional: a little zucchini or mushroom for extra body
  • Good sea salt — aim for about 20–25% of the total vegetable weight (this is what makes it last)
  • 1–2 Tbsp olive oil, ghee, or tallow
Chop everything, pulse in a food processor until it’s a coarse paste. Mix in the salt and fat. Cook it gently in a pan 30–40 minutes, stirring, until most of the water is gone and it’s thick. Cool, pack into jars, fridge.
Use: 1 teaspoon per cup of hot water. Or drop a spoon into soups, sautés, meat, etc.
It keeps weeks to a couple of months in the fridge because of the salt. Freeze extras in ice cube trays if you want longer.
Even simpler dry version
If you don’t want to cook anything down:
This started as a recipe I found, then I fixed the salt, put garlic where it belongs, and stopped throwing every dried herb in the jar at once.
Clean Veggie Broth Powder
(makes about 2½ cups)
Base
  • 2 cups nutritional yeast
  • ⅓ cup good salt (Real Salt, Celtic, or similar — start here, taste, add a pinch more if needed)
  • 2 Tbsp onion powder
  • 2 Tbsp garlic powder
  • 1 Tbsp dried parsley
  • 2 tsp turmeric
  • 1 tsp celery seed (or 1 tsp celery salt and reduce the plain salt a little)
Herbs (pick one lane so it doesn’t get muddy)
Italian-leaning:
  • 1 tsp basil
  • 1 tsp thyme
  • 1 tsp oregano
  • ½ tsp rosemary, crushed
Or keep it simple:
  • 2 tsp mixed Italian seasoning
  • 1 tsp dried dill
Optional depth (optional)
  • 1 tsp powdered lemon peel
  • ½ tsp mustard powder
  • pinch of chili flakes or cayenne
  • 1–2 Tbsp dried mushroom powder (porcini or mixed) if you want extra savory without more yeast
Method
Blend everything except the parsley until it’s a fine powder. Pulse in the parsley last so it stays a little visible. Jar it. Cupboard is fine.
Use
1 teaspoon per cup of hot water.
If someone skips nutritional yeast
Keep the same spices and salt, then add extra onion/garlic and a bit of mushroom powder so it doesn’t taste thin.
If you want the bone version
Make a strong pot of bone broth the usual way (vinegar soak, long simmer, good bones). Strain, then simmer it uncovered until it reduces by half or more and turns syrupy. Mix a little of that concentrate with salt and freeze in cubes. That’s the real “better than” version — gelatin, minerals, real flavor.

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