Dear Sir/Madam

I am writing to you about your stocks. That is stocks as ingredients (chicken stock, beef stock, etc .) rather than levels of produce. It might seem to be a strange thing to get passionate about, but as stocks are the base of some great dishes, a good stock can make a meal, and a bad one murder it.

I should say that given that I attach importance to a good stock, I am happy to invest time in making what I can. So I will usually have some vegetable and chickens stocks in my freezer. But some stocks, especially beef stock are a real pain to make at home – acquiring the bones and simmering for hours isn’t great use of time and energy. So beef stock in particular I usually buy in.

The reason I am writing this is because I find it thoroughly depressing when I look at (and certainly when I taste) stock products from the supermarkets. Don’t get me wrong – I have no illusions as to what I will get in a stock cube – it is compressed powder or granules so I don’t expect it to reconstitute in to a natural stock. The new forms of jelly stocks aren’t that much better – artificial stocks with a gelling agent to make it appear more like a concentrated stock.

What depresses me is the tubs or sachets of “stock”. These are usually packaged to look like good traditional recipe stocks the way you would make them yourself at home. But one look at the ingredients, and you see ingredients such as yeast extract and tomato paste as core ingredients in a beef stock and you realise that it is more about flavour-enhancing than traditional recipes. And then the taste is even more disappointing – if it tasted good I could maybe think about being a little more forgiving, but when a beef stock tastes sweet, salty and malty, I personally don’t associate that with the flavour of meat.

And then there’s the salt. Why add salt to a stock? You’ve decided for me how seasoned I want my dish to be. If the salt wasn’t there I could do what I want with the seasoning of my dish. As you’ve included it, I can’t remove the salt.

I give you an example. French onion soups is a great dish and beef stock is core to the recipe. But try making that with with a typical supermarket stock. It should have a rich, meaty taste. Let’s just say that it isn’t great. And don’t get me started on gravy.

I should say that I haven’t done an exhaustive search. But searching Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose recently I certainly could not find anything close to what I wanted. It was only Ocado that seemed to have a couple of good sounding products – stocks made of bones, vegetables, herbs and water and pretty much nothing else.

So please supermarkets – bring us some nice stocks. I don’t care if they are in a tub, a sachet, concentrated in to a pod, or whatever package you want to sell it in, just give us an option of a stock made with with traditional ingredients. Then I can enjoy a nice soup or gravy without feeling the the need to rant.

Yours faithfully,

Philip Clarke.