When your soup or sauce recipe calls for stock, making your own from scratch isn’t always an option (come on, it takes, like, eight hours). But when you’re going for the store-bought stuff, there’s a secret ingredient you can add to make it taste infinitely better.
What you need: A packet of gelatin powder and a container of store-bought chicken or beef broth.
What you do: Pour the broth into a mixing bowl and sprinkle in 1 to 2 teaspoons of gelatin powder. Make sure that the broth is no warmer than room temperature so the gelatin can properly hydrate, or “bloom,” without getting lumpy. Then heat it up and use however you’d like.
Why it works: Since homemade broth has hours to simmer on the stove, it’s able to extract gelatin from the animal bones—which produces a much richer and more full-bodied flavor. By adding powdered gelatin to store-bought stock (which is often thinner and more watery in consistency), you’re able to get similar results in much less time.
