What is the sea salt equivalent of a bouillon cube?

[pazzaglia]

I'm making a recipe where it calls for bullion cube and, besides the obvious difference in "aromatics", I would like to use the same amount of "slatyness" that is found in the cube. Is there some kind of conversion I should make? The cube weighs about 11 grams and superficially it could take up the space of two tea spoons - but it has alot of other "stuff" in it so I'm thinking it should be less but... how much, less?

Is there some kind of "bullion cube converter"? I'm pretty sure for an equivalent "aromatics" should be 1/2 carrot, 1/2 onion, 1/2 celery stick, parsely and a tad of tomato concentrate.

Thanks!

L

[jsmeeker]

What's the dish? Is it a chicken boullion cube? If so, do you have any good, concentrated chicken stock on hand? I might use that instead of the cube and water. For the salt level, I think "season until it tastes right to you" rule is the best route. Does the list of ingredients list MSG? If so, you could add a bit of that in there.

[pazzaglia]

Thanks for the quick reply. I am not trying to exactly replicate a bullion cube, just quantify it's saltiness and use an equivalent amount.

Working on adapting my Southern Italian mother-in-law's sauce, and a bullion is her secret ingredient - I will use anchovies for the "umami" kick.

Thanks,

L

[gfweb]

Look at the sodium content in the bullion cube. Unless there are significant amounts of other Na sources that will tell you how much salt there is. Then go back to your chemistry text and find the molecular weight of Na and figure out how many moles of Na is present. Then take that number and multiply it by the MW of Cl. Add that product to the Na weight on the label and that will be the amount of sea salt (or any other fairly pure salt) to add back.

I knew college chemistry would come in handy some day.

[gfweb]

Or just add salt till it tastes right.

[BadRabbit]

Thanks for the quick reply. I am not trying to exactly replicate a bullion cube, just quantify it's saltiness and use an equivalent amount.

Working on adapting my Southern Italian mother-in-law's sauce, and a bullion is her secret ingredient - I will use anchovies for the "umami" kick.

Thanks,

L

You should be able to look at the sodium on the package and get a pretty good idea of how much salt it contains.

The only tricky part is that I'm not sure whether the sodium on the label includes the weight of the chlorine in NaCl (though I'm nearly positive it does not). If it does not, then you can just take the amount of sodium and roughly double it to get the salt amount (Sodium makes up about 40% of NaCl's weight).

Edited to clarify.

Edited May 23, 2011 by BadRabbit (log)

[jsmeeker]

Thanks for the quick reply. I am not trying to exactly replicate a bullion cube, just quantify it's saltiness and use an equivalent amount.

Working on adapting my Southern Italian mother-in-law's sauce, and a bullion is her secret ingredient - I will use anchovies for the "umami" kick.

Thanks,

L

Do you have a good memory as to what her sauce tastes like?

Another suggestion for "umami" kick is Magi sauce. Comes in a little bottle.

[&roid]

Or just add salt till it tastes right.

Surely this is the correct answer - everything else about the recipe is likely to be slightly different to how the original one was, the ingredients themselves will have different salt contents. So there's not likely to be any mileage in getting the amount of salt in the bouillon cube right to a tenth of a gram, just add it until it's right would be my suggestion too.

[Tri2Cook]

Or just add salt till it tastes right.

Surely this is the correct answer -

That's always the correct answer... even when the recipe tells you how much salt to add.

[pazzaglia]

Thanks everyone, I will leave the chemistry calculations to the scientists of the group but will look at the package to see if the sodium content is noted (we have different nutritional info in Europe on the package) so I hope it's there so I can at least "ball park" the amount my mother-in-law uses with her cube.

Thanks for the soy recommendation, too. But, I have to keep it "real" and "authentic" or I risk having my citizenship revoked by the Italian culinary police!

Ciao,

L

Edited May 23, 2011 by pazzaglia (log)