Homemade beef bouillon cube, grandma’s recipe for a homemade cube as good as the store-bought one but healthier and more genuine. In fact, the homemade beef bouillon cube is preservative-free and made with simple, traceable ingredients! The other day, after hesitating and postponing, I finally decided to make the famous Brown beef fond, a gourmet amber, rich and flavorful sauce full of umami, obtained from bones and leftover meat parts — in my case beef — to which vegetables, tomato paste and aromatics are added. A true recovery recipe, ideal to accompany meat roasts and excellent for enriching filled fresh stuffed pasta and risottos. Once I had prepared the brown fond, I found myself with all the solid parts of bones, meat and vegetables that needed to be rescued, so I turned them into homemade beef bouillon cubes, tasty and genuine, which I store in the freezer and use whenever needed. They rival commercial bouillon cubes in flavor. Ready to run to the kitchen and discover how to make a good homemade beef bouillon cube? Let’s go to the kitchen — know that you’ll need a bit of patience, but you’ll obtain enough bouillon cubes to last at least a year. As always, remember you can follow my Facebook page (here) and my Instagram profile (here).

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Difficulty: Very easy
Cost: Budget-friendly
Preparation time: 1 Hour
Cooking methods: Stovetop
Cuisine: Italian
Seasonality: All seasons

Ingredients to make the beef bouillon cube

lbs beef (bones cut into small pieces)
4 celery stalks
4 carrots
2 onions
2 sprigs rosemary
4 leaves bay leaves
to taste thyme
6 tbsp butter
1 1/4 cups red wine
4 cloves garlic
4 leaves sage
to taste marjoram
to taste whole peppercorns
4 tbsp tomato paste
lbs ice
lbs salt

Tools

Pot
Blender
Baking sheets
Parchment paper

Steps

For this recipe I used beef bones, which you can easily find at the supermarket and which give more flavor to your bouillon. If you can’t find them, substitute with 1.8 lb (about 800 g) of beef, veal, chicken, pork or a mix. Then proceed in the same way as indicated below, but without the oven step for any meat pieces — you can brown them in a pan at home.

Let’s begin preparing the brown fond. Collect the bones in a roasting pan and toast them in a hot oven at 392°F for 35–40 minutes. They should darken and release a fragrant aroma throughout the house.
Now gather in a very large, heavy-bottomed pot all the vegetables roughly chopped and the garlic, add the butter and start sautéing over high heat. Add all the aromatics and the tomato paste and cook until the vegetables begin to stick to the bottom; stir often and do not let them burn.
Add the bones and two thirds of the fond that you find in the roasting pan — even if fatty, these are the juices and flavors of the bones and meat. If you wish to add pieces of meat, which I recommend, add them now.
Cook over high heat for 2–3 minutes, stirring often, to let the ingredients flavor each other. Add the ice — the thermal shock from the ice will rapidly lower the temperature and help extract all the juices and flavors from the ingredients. As soon as the ice has melted and everything comes to a boil, add a teaspoon of salt, reduce the heat to the lowest setting and let simmer gently for at least 6 hours with the lid slightly ajar.
If impurities rise to the surface at first, skim them off with a fine strainer. After the time has passed, the bone broth will have reduced considerably. Use a skimmer to collect the solid part: bones, vegetables, meat, leaves and spices, and set them aside. You can proceed to make the brown fond with the broth (link above), but in this recipe we will focus on the bouillon cubes.
Clean the reserved solids by removing all the bones but keeping any meat attached to them; also remove the bay leaves and any rosemary twigs. Weigh the solids and prepare salt equal to two-thirds of their weight. Put everything into the blender jar and blend at maximum speed until you obtain a smooth paste.
Spread the mixture on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and keep in the oven for 2 hours at 212°F. If possible, at half time cover the mixture with parchment paper and flip it, placing it back on the sheet.
Portion your bouillon into cubes and arrange them in layers in airtight containers, separating each layer with parchment paper. Store in the freezer and use as needed just like a regular bouillon cube.
Frozen bouillon cubes keep for about 1 year while remaining soft.