You have four stock cubes in your kitchen, and you have probably never stopped to read what is inside them.
Turn the wrapper over and look at the ingredients.
Salt comes first.
Then a flavour enhancer.
Then starch, colour, and only a small amount of ingredients that actually came from food.
So, the cube is mainly salt and flavour enhancers, made to make your food taste stronger.
And you are paying more for it than you would pay for salt.
The bigger problem is that these cubes have replaced foods that can give your soup real flavour.
Here is what you can use instead.
› Iru or dawadawa: Add 1 tablespoon early while cooking. It breaks down into the soup and gives it a deep, fermented flavour. This is one of the natural flavours the stock cube is trying to imitate.
› Ground crayfish: Add 2 tablespoons to a family-sized pot. It gives the soup a deep, savoury taste and also adds protein.
› Ogiri: For egusi or bitterleaf soup, use just ½ teaspoon. It has a strong flavour, so you do not need much.
› Dried fish: Soak it in hot water for 20 minutes first. Then add both the fish and that soaking water to your soup. Do not throw the water away because it contains a lot of the fish's flavour.
› Onion and fresh pepper: Use these to build more flavour in the soup.
› Salt: Add the salt yourself. This way, you know exactly how much salt is going into your food instead of getting most of it from a cube.
Now, here is the part you should expect.
Your first soup without the cube may not taste as strong.
That does not necessarily mean the food has no flavour. Your tongue has been used to the strong taste from flavour enhancers for years, so natural flavours may seem weak at first.
The second pot should taste better.
By the third, your taste buds can start adjusting. You may even notice that the stock cube has a strange, chemical-like taste that you did not notice before.
So do not try to change everything at once.
Make just one pot this week without a stock cube.
Just one.
Then see how it tastes.