Where's the Beef?

The perfect compliment to homemade soup is homemade stock. Yum! Good beef stock should include grass fed, organic beef—and bones (the marrow and gelatin are particularly nutritious.) When pressed for time, it can be tempting to pick up a beef broth mix from the grocery store. Well, I wasn’t so tempted after reading these ingredients for a popular mix: Salt, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, sugar, monosodium glutamate, dehydrated onion, maltodextrin, dextrin (with beef extract and partially hydrogenated soybean oil), caramel color, autolyzed yeast, corn oil, dry malt syrup, disodium inosinate, disodium guaylate, natural flavor, not more than 2% silicon dioxide added as an anti-caking agent.  Really? Yuk! I can’t even pronounce most of these words, let alone begin to figure out where the beef is.  I think I'll pass.