France in Focus

For the first time since I've been in France, I cooked a dish yesterday that required chicken stock.

I used Maggi vollaile bouliion cubes & made it up as directed on the pack. To me it spoilt the dish as it was an overwhelming taste of salt & little else.

Back in the UK I used Knoor stock cubes & was fine with them.

I wonder if it could be me as I have had several taste changes post Covid - I now loathe bananas & used to eat them daily!

Any recommendations?

If you can find the jelly-like stock cubes in individual tubs, they're not so salty imo. T hey've disappeared from the shelves here unfortunately.

Ah yes, we've found a lot of stock cubes are horribly over-salted. We use the Maggi Bio ones which have less salt and use half the amount they suggest. The salt content of stock cubes varies hugely - it's best to check the packets first !

I've never liked salt, I don't know why, and I've always likened it to people who can't stand sugar in their tea or coffee. We check the salt and sugar content on everything these days - pasta sauces are the worst but you can find some that aren't salt-laden.

I’ve had taste issues since Covid,especially tea (the drink) I have a bit of a cold/hay fever at the moment and my taste is affected again I even did a LFT just in case but it’s negative

I agree about the "Stock" cubes being too salty, I break it in half, before I used the little "Jelly" pots Beef & Chicken but not seen them for months.

Ditto with jelly pots. Used to use 'em but non existant recently.
We're now well stocked? up with OXO cubes mrs LAF brings (smuggles) back from the UK .
Reading the beef cube info it says 1 cube per 109ml of water & contains 0.95gm of salt per 100ml of prepared stock.

Some of the well-known makes boast a 25% salt reduction on the box

Thank you all. I will have a look for the 'jelly' ones & for Bio ones as well.

Magi and knorr do lower salt vegetable stock cubes, I don't know if they do meat ones as well though.