Bouillon Cube Conversions: Cups, Teaspoons, Calories & Sodium

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The short answer: one Herb-Ox bouillon cube makes one cup of broth. That single number is printed on the pack, and almost every other bouillon question — how many cubes for a quart of soup, how much sodium you are adding, whether a recipe calling for granules will work — comes back to it.

This is the reference page we kept wanting when someone asked us a bouillon question over email. Everything below about Herb-Ox comes from the packaging and the nutrition panel on our own product pages, and where the pack does not say something, we say so instead of guessing.

One cube, one cup

Herb-Ox cubes are portioned so that a single cube dissolved in one cup of hot water gives you one cup of broth. Drop them straight into soups and stews, or into the water you cook rice and grains in.

Cubes Broth Also written as
1 1 cup 8 fl oz
2 2 cups 1 pint
4 4 cups 1 quart (32 fl oz)
8 8 cups 2 quarts
16 16 cups 1 gallon

Useful shorthand: a standard 32 oz carton of store-bought broth is four cubes. A big pot of soup that starts with two quarts of stock is eight.

How far does a pack go?

  • Vegetable 2-pack — 25 cubes per container, two containers, 50 cubes. That is 50 cups of broth, or 12.5 quarts.
  • Chicken, beef and vegetable variety 3-pack — 25 cubes per flavour, 75 cubes. That is 75 cups, or just under 19 quarts, split across three flavours.

What about teaspoons?

This is the question we see most often, and it deserves an honest answer: Herb-Ox does not print a teaspoon equivalent on the cube packaging. The measurement the manufacturer gives you is the cup of finished broth, not a spoon of dry product.

So if a recipe calls for granulated or powdered bouillon, work backwards from the liquid rather than trying to convert the solid. If the recipe wants "1 teaspoon bouillon granules dissolved in 1 cup water," that is one cube. If it wants granules sprinkled dry into a dish with no added liquid, crush one cube and start with less than you think you need — the cube is dense, and you can always add more.

Anyone quoting you an exact gram-for-gram teaspoon conversion for a specific brand is estimating. We would rather you had the number that is actually on the box.

Bouillon cube nutrition

Per cube, from the Herb-Ox nutrition panel:

Nutrient Chicken Beef Vegetable
Calories 5 5 5
Total fat 0 g 0 g 0 g
Sodium 1020 mg (44% DV) 960 mg (42% DV) 960 mg (42% DV)
Total carbohydrate 1 g 1 g 1 g
Sugars 1 g 1 g 1 g
Protein 0 g 0 g 0 g

Calories

Five calories per cube, across all three flavours. A cube is a seasoning, not an ingredient with any real caloric weight — even a gallon of broth from 16 cubes is 80 calories.

Sodium — the number to actually watch

Salt is the first ingredient in every flavour, and it shows: 960 mg per vegetable or beef cube, 1020 mg per chicken cube. The pack puts that at 42–44% of the daily value per cube.

That matters most when you are scaling up. Four cubes for a quart of soup is roughly 3,800–4,100 mg of sodium in the pot, depending on flavour, before you add anything else. If you are cooking for someone watching their salt, use fewer cubes and more water than the one-to-one ratio, and season at the end instead.

Carbohydrates

One gram of carbohydrate per cube, one gram of which is sugar. Whether that fits a particular way of eating is a question for you and, if it is a medical matter, your doctor — but the number itself is small and it is on the label.

Are bouillon cubes gluten-free?

Herb-Ox cubes are labelled gluten-free — the chicken, beef and vegetable flavours alike. The vegetable cubes are additionally labelled fat-free and are vegetarian-friendly.

"Bouillon cubes" as a category are not automatically gluten-free, though. Wheat-derived ingredients turn up in some brands, so the label is worth reading rather than assuming. Herb-Ox states it on the pack, which is the only reason we state it here.

What is actually in a cube

The ingredient lists, per flavour, exactly as printed:

Chicken

Salt, Hydrolyzed Corn Protein, Sugar, Silicon Dioxide (Anticaking Agent), 2% Or Less Chicken Fat, Disodium Inosinate & Disodium Guanylate, Dehydrated Cooked Chicken (Contains Natural Flavor), Safflower Oil, Dehydrated Parsley, Turmeric, Onion Powder, Spices, Dehydrated Garlic.

Beef

Salt, Sugar, Flavor (Hydrolyzed Soy Protein, Salt), Hydrolyzed Soy Protein, Contains 2% Or Less of Silicon Dioxide (Anticaking Agent), Beef Fat, Spices, Onion Powder, Dehydrated Cooked Beef, Caramel Color, Dried Beef Stock, Disodium Inosinate and Disodium Guanylate, Autolyzed Yeast, Flavoring.

Vegetable

Salt, Hydrolyzed Soy Protein, Sugar, Corn Oil, Contains 2% Or Less Of Silicon Dioxide (Anticaking Agent), Onion Powder, Spices, Tomato Powder, Carrot Powder (Maltodextrin, Carrot Juice), Disodium Inosinate, Disodium Guanylate.

A note on "No MSG Added"

Herb-Ox cubes are labelled No MSG Added. That phrasing is deliberate and it is not the same as "MSG-free" — hydrolyzed soy or corn protein and the disodium inosinate and guanylate you can see in the lists above are flavour enhancers that carry naturally occurring glutamates. No monosodium glutamate is added as an ingredient, which is what the label claims and all it claims.

If that distinction is the thing you actually care about, we wrote about it at length in Bouillon Cubes Without MSG: What to Look For, including what to check on any brand's label.

Storing bouillon cubes

Keep them somewhere cool and dry with the container closed — cubes are mostly salt, and salt pulls moisture out of humid air, which is what turns a cube crumbly or sticky.

For shelf life, go by the best-by date printed on your container rather than a number from the internet. Dates vary by production run, and we would only be guessing at yours.

Quick answers

How much broth does one bouillon cube make?

One cup. Four cubes make a quart, which is the same as a standard carton of store-bought broth.

How many bouillon cubes equal a teaspoon?

Herb-Ox does not state a teaspoon equivalent on the pack. If your recipe dissolves granules in liquid, match the liquid instead: one cube per cup of water.

How many calories are in a bouillon cube?

Five, in all three Herb-Ox flavours.

How much sodium is in a bouillon cube?

960 mg in vegetable and beef cubes, 1020 mg in chicken — 42–44% of the daily value per cube.

Are Herb-Ox bouillon cubes gluten-free?

Yes, all three flavours are labelled gluten-free.

How many cubes are in a pack?

25 per container. The vegetable 2-pack has 50 cubes; the chicken, beef and vegetable variety pack has 75.

The cubes themselves

Both ship free anywhere in the US, dispatched the same day Monday to Saturday from our shop in Lynbrook, New York.

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