Natural Stock Cubes Recipe – Homemade, Healthy, and Flavorful

Discover how to make natural stock cubes at home. Packed with fresh vegetables and rich flavors, our homemade stock cubes elevate every dish. No preservatives or additives!

Natural Stock Cubes Recipe

In an era where home cooking is witnessing a resurgence, more and more people are searching for ways to replace store-bought products with homemade alternatives. Among the many culinary challenges, figuring out how to introduce depth and flavor into dishes without the help of commercial seasonings is a key one. That’s where our Natural Stock Cubes Recipe comes into play. These homemade stock cubes aren’t just flavorful but are also free from any artificial preservatives and additives.

Serves:

8 people

Time to Prepare:

8 people

Time to cook or cure:

8 people

Serves:

Fermentation & Baking

Serves:

24 cubes

Time to Prepare:

1.5 hour

Time to cook or cure:

26 hours in freezer

Skills:

Puree and Freeze

Ingredients

For the CUBES

A very generous amount of olive oil (cover the bottom of the pan about ½ inch)
10 carrots
10 leeks
8 onions
5 garlic cloves
3 bay leaves
5 peppercorns
2 tbsp asafoetida
10% salt (of the weight of the vegetable mix when completely sautéed and ready to blitz)

Tools

Cutting board
Sharp knife
Large frying pan (or fry off in smaller batches)
High-speed blender
Baking tray
Baking paper/wax paper to cover baking tray
Freezer
Baking paper sheets, cut into a size large enough to wrap individual stock cubes
Ziplock bag to store the cubes in the freezer.

Useful guidelines

These cubes are great to have on hand to add extra depth of flavor to a quick dish. Add 1 for each liter of liquid. However, the exact amount might vary depending on the type of liquid you’re using. Fattier ingredients will intensify the flavor of the cubes. Each stock cube should contain around 10 grams of salt.

Storage

Keep in the freezer at -18 degrees Celsius for up to 1 year.

Directions

Simply follow these steps:

Step 1
Wash vegetables and chop them all up into small cubes. Peel and chop up your garlic and measure out your dry spices.

Step 2
Cover the bottom of your frying pan with a generous amount of olive oil. Wait for it to heat up and then add in the onion. Fry until translucent, then add garlic, carrot, and leek. Introduce the bay leaves, pepper, and asafoetida. Sauté everything until it’s golden and aromatic. The mixture should smell sweet and aromatic. This can take quite a long time. Ensure the bottom doesn’t stick and burn.

Step 3
Remove 2 of the 3 bay leaves and then take all the sautéed veggies out of the pan. Weigh them. Add 10% of that weight in salt and stir well. Line a baking sheet or oven dish.

Step 4
Batch blend this until it becomes a smooth purée. Transfer the purée to the lined baking sheet. Smooth out the surface and then score them based on how many pieces you’d want, given that each piece would have 10 grams of salt. E.g., if you added 100g of salt, then you can create 10 cubes. If you added 200g of salt, then slice them into 20 cubes, etc. Create lines with a knife so the cubes break easily when taken from the freezer.

Step 5
Freeze the cubes for a minimum of 6 hours, but preferably overnight.

Step 6
Measure the height and width of your cubes and cut up pieces of wax paper that are big enough to fold around the cubes. Aluminum foil will also work.

Step 7
Take your cubes out of the freezer and package each one individually. Place them into a ziplock bag and voilà, ready for use!