Powdered bouillon is one of those ingredients that gets an unfairly bad rap. It’s too salty and too chemical-laden, its critics say — one simply must make their own homemade stock instead of reconstituting a couple of brightly colored, salty cubes with water. And I generally agree that homemade stock is one of those ingredients that always feels worth the effort. Unless, of course, we’re talking about my beloved Knorr Caldo de Tomate.
Though it translates to “tomato soup,” this bouillon powder is so much more than its name implies. Its ingredients list is long and brimming with synthetic food dyes, but I’m more than willing to look past the chemicals because it really is just that damn good. It first entered my kitchen around the time when I was trying to figure out how to make restaurant-style, Tex-Mex rice. You know the stuff: it’s fluffy, tinged bright red, and perfectly spiced with cumin and garlic. A childhood friend whose parents ran a Mexican restaurant told me that it just could not be done without caldo de tomate, and you know what? She was right.
Technically, caldo de tomate isn’t just tomato broth. It’s tomato-chicken broth — which, it turns out, is a really good thing. The addition of the savory, chicken flavor boosts the tomato powder’s umami notes, creating a rich, slightly spicy product that’s a major departure from most bouillon cubes, which tend to taste only of salt. Powdered broth concentrates also tend to be thin on flavor because they lack the collagen and fat that gives body to the real stuff. But the chemists at Knorr have figured out how to impart some black magic into caldo de tomate, because it’s actually good enough to mix with water and sip in a mug on its own. (Especially if you’re sick or violently hungover.)
I’m prone to throwing a pinch of the stuff in just about anything. My Tex-Mex rice is a given, but the powder is also good in sauces and soups and meat marinades, or basically anything that could use a little extra “oomph.” Throw it on popcorn, roasted vegetables, really whatever you want. It has become a secret weapon in my marinara sauce, adding layers of flavor that are especially valuable in the winter months, when I’m stuck using canned sauce because the tomatoes at the grocery store taste vaguely of crunchy water. My friend Andrea Grimes, a writer and former Eater editor, told me about adding caldo de tomate to a bloody mary (or michelada) and I’ve never made one without it since.
It would be easy to attribute caldo de tomate’s powers to the copious amounts of MSG that it contains, but that’s an oversimplification. Caldo de tomate has layers of MSG, both the ingredient itself and the kind that occurs organically in tomato powder, and that’s what makes it special. And sure, some of you are going to panic when you read the ingredient list because there is definitely some unrecognizable stuff on that label. But considering that I am already full of microplastics and seed oils and whatever other health bugaboos that the wellness crowd is worried about today, I’m not going to lose sleep over a few teaspoons of caldo de tomate every once in a while.
