Has anybody else noticed that OXO cubes are not as crumbly as they used to be?

[Mick F]

............... but what are they for?

We're having stew and dumplings tomorrow and OXO won't even be considered.

[al_yrpal]

............... but what are they for?

We're having stew and dumplings tomorrow and OXO won't even be considered.

Adding flavour! But, as you say, you might not want to. On Goodness Gracious Me 'Bland' was the favoured taste.

Living with younger folk whos cooking gurus are Gordon and Jamie, everything they cook is boiled to death and slathered with some sort of sauce and often laced with chillis. Personally I do like some of that stuff but I also like to taste unadulterated potatoes, carrots, parsnips, runner beans which have been steamed and where the intense original flavour shines through.

Al

[mumbojumbo]

I bet you were keen on Deliah,and when younger Fanny (Craddock)-they were big advocates of dumplings,spotted dick and various tarts.

[Mick F]

Cook stuff properly with the right ingredients, and OXO isn't needed in the slightest.

Maybe "flavourings" are required because people don't have enough time or inclination to actually cook.

[mumbojumbo]

How do you manage to achieve an over-salty gravy with undertones of msg?I bet yoiur wuife does cooking.

[Mick F]

We both do the cooking.

Fry off onion and celery with a small squirt of tomato puree, and then transfer to a oven-proof pot. We have cast iron.
Fry off the mince - good quality steak mince from a real butcher - then transfer to the pot.
Meanwhile dice spuds, carrots, swede and put those in the pot too.
Wash out the frying pan with hot water and add it to the pot.
Salt and pepper, and more water perhaps.
Possibly a spoon of plain flour to thicken but not really necessary as you'll be making dumplings later.

Put the pot in a low oven and leave it for hours. Check occasionally for liquid level.

When done, drop in a few suet dumplings and spoon the gravy over them and return the pot to the oven but with the lid off.
When the dumplings are done, serve into pre-warmed bowls.

Yum!

[al_yrpal]

A Rick tip...boil new potatoes with a bit of Lovage..

Will be digging up the last two rows this afternoon. Charlottes left in, as big as bakers!

Al

[peetee]

They definitely are soggier, even when new. Back in the day they had a habit of exploding beefy bits all over the kitchen work surfaces if you didn’t adopt a low-risk crumbling action betwixt thumb and forefinger.

[KTHSullivan]

They definitely are soggier, even when new. Back in the day they had a habit of exploding beefy bits all over the kitchen work surfaces if you didn’t adopt a low-risk crumbling action betwixt thumb and forefinger.

It is my intention to pursue the matter and see if I can establish if there is a European standard on crumbliness. There are definitely quite a few technical papers on hygroscopicity and wettability. If I get the chance, when I get back to the lab I will see if I can derive the compressibility index of a chicken OXO. Obviously I would need an older example for comparison; may have look in the bottom my old Karrimor panniers.

[simonineaston]

As a rule, modern food processors will add anything they think they can get away with. They will not tell you what they have added, as they do not care about you. In the old days, food was wholesome, clean and good for you. Modern food is not. The beef stock cube is just one example. In the old days it was made purely of perfect cows that were happy & cheerful. The result was a cube that crumbled nicely. Modern stock cubes are made from all the bits nobody in their right mind would eat, if they saw them. The cows they come from are not even proper cows and if they are, they are very very grumpy and sad. Then all the unsavoury bitsNpieces are mixed with awful chemicals and that is why the cube is all gacky... Think of them as a lump of bad things that just happen to taste a bit like we imagine cows' corpses might.

[KTHSullivan]

"The result was a cube that crumbled nicely."

Seems we having a bit of consensus here.

[Mick F]

:lol:
We both do the cooking.

Fry off onion and celery with a small squirt of tomato puree, and then transfer to a oven-proof pot. We have cast iron.
Fry off the mince - good quality steak mince from a real butcher - then transfer to the pot.
Meanwhile dice spuds, carrots, swede and put those in the pot too.
Wash out the frying pan with hot water and add it to the pot.
Salt and pepper, and more water perhaps.
Possibly a spoon of plain flour to thicken but not really necessary as you'll be making dumplings later.

Put the pot in a low oven and leave it for hours. Check occasionally for liquid level.

When done, drop in a few suet dumplings and spoon the gravy over them and return the pot to the oven but with the lid off.
When the dumplings are done, serve into pre-warmed bowls.

Yum!

[al_yrpal]

Lancashire..? Tripe and Onions. Lancashire Hot Pot, Black Pudding ( the Hebrideans do it better )

Al

[Mick F]

Never liked tripe.
Hotpot - wonderful, and often do it with neck of lamb.

Black pudding?
As a kid, they were boiled whole, then eaten including the skin and the fatty lumps.
Loved them, but since the old days in Lancashire, we don't see them down here other than the long thin ones you slice and fry.

[Jdsk]

In the old days, food was wholesome, clean and good for you. Modern food is not. The beef stock cube is just one example. In the old days it was made purely of perfect cows that were happy & cheerful.

When was this Golden Age?

Until very recently food was often contaminated and infected. And when it was first mass-produced it was frequently adulterated.

Apart from large fractions of the population simply not having enough food micronutrient deficiency was rampant from the invention of agriculture onwards.

Jonathan