Huda Sultan and Moza Al Kharusi – two friends with different professional paths – recently got together, and something was brewing between them for quite long. The secret is now out for all to relish…it’s a broth!

When you spend long hours in the kitchen simmering bones and vegetables to extract flavours that enhance your dinner offerings, have you ever wondered if there was an easy way out? ‘Soul Ladle’ now aims to ease that tradition in modern kitchens, offering a convenient solution.

Founded by long-time friends Huda Sultan and Moza Al Kharusi, Soul Ladle grew from a shared love of food, home cooking and experimenting with flavours. Though their professional paths differed, both women found a common purpose in making traditionally prepared stocks and broths accessible to people who value good ingredients but may not have hours to spend in the kitchen.

Huda’s background is in Hospitality and Tourism. Driven by her passion for cooking, she later completed a one-year Grand Diplôme culinary programme at Le Cordon Bleu in London. Moza holds a master’s degree in Speech and Language Pathology from the United States and worked in the field for years. Alongside that career, she explored her interest in food through Mimi’s Catering, the home-based kombucha business MimiBoocha, and her partnership at Mani’s Café.

Both women regularly used stocks in their own cooking and saw how much a good stock could bring to a dish. They were also interested in bone broth’s nutritional composition, including its protein and collagen-derived amino acids. Yet they struggled to find in Oman the traditionally prepared stocks they made at home, using real ingredients without artificial preservatives or additives. They decided to make their own products available to others.

Stocks and broths are not a new food trend. Generations of home cooks around the world slowly simmered bones and vegetables to extract flavour and make the most of available ingredients. Soul Ladle aims to bring that tradition into modern kitchens, offering convenience without losing sight of the basics.

The company’s beef bone broth has been laboratory tested. The founders see broth as a natural source of protein that can form part of a balanced diet, not a miracle cure or substitute for other foods. Their stocks can be used in family meals, while bone broth can be sipped warm or added to recipes. Rice, pasta sauces, stews, couscous, risottos and braised dishes all benefit from the depth of flavour stock provides.

Behind the finished product are months of hard work. The founders have spent eight months chopping vegetables, roasting bones, testing recipes, straining stock and filling pouches – often smelling of roasted bones, with plenty of tears from chopping onions. They handle everything from recipe development and ingredient sourcing to production, packaging, marketing and sometimes deliveries themselves. Trial and error has been part of the learning curve, balanced by laughter and a commitment to quality and food safety.

Soul Ladle is an Omani business developed and produced in Muscat, operating from a dedicated commercial production kitchen in Ansab. Its range includes Beef Bone Broth, Chicken Stock, Vegetable Stock, Asian Chicken Stock and Bone Broth Cubes. Products are sold frozen and made without artificial preservatives or additives.

The founders hope to grow Soul Ladle into a trusted Omani food brand with the potential to reach markets beyond the country. Their aim is simple – to make cooking with real ingredients less complicated by taking care of the time-consuming preparation themselves. It is the idea behind their tagline – ‘Real Ingredients, Real Nourishment’.

Here’s an interesting tete-a-tete with Huda Sultan:

How do you plan to source your raw materials locally in Oman to ensure they are free from residual hormones?

Sourcing is obviously very important to us, because at the end of the day, the quality of our stocks and broths depends on the ingredients we’re putting into them. We work with established suppliers here in Oman who have recognised food-safety standards and can provide us with consistent, good-quality ingredients. For our chicken stocks, we use locally/regionally produced chicken. Our beef bones are sourced through an established supplier in the local market.

What we can confidently tell our customers is exactly what goes into our own products. We’re using real chicken, beef bones, fresh vegetables and aromatics. We roast, cook and prepare everything ourselves, without adding artificial preservatives, flavour enhancers or unnecessary additives. And that’s really what makes Soul Ladle different from the conventional stock cubes that many of us have become accustomed to using.

As for maintaining flavour consistency, we follow standardised recipes with carefully measured ingredients, controlled cooking times and the same preparation methods for every batch. We want someone who buys our Chicken Stock today to know that when they buy it again next month, they’re getting exactly the same flavour and quality.

Ultimately, we’re not claiming to produce some magical health product. We’re simply making proper stocks and broths, the traditional way, using good and real ingredients, and making them convenient for people who don’t have the time to prepare them themselves.

What is your specific culinary process to maximise collagen and mineral extraction without sacrificing clarity or taste?

Our approach combines traditional stock-making techniques with controlled commercial production methods. For our beef bone broth, we use a combination of bones, including marrow bones and collagen-rich joints and connective tissue like knuckle and leg bones. These are roasted together with selected vegetables to develop depth and richness of flavour – and we use apple cider vinegar in the recipe to extract more collagen.

Our chicken stocks follow a different recipe and cooking process. We use various chicken bones and whole chicken wings together with fresh vegetables and aromatics, to produce a lighter but equally flavourful stock. After cooking, the broth is carefully double strained, rapidly chilled and the excess fat removed. This gives us a clean, full-bodied product without unnecessary greasiness.

One of our favourite things about bone broth is the natural gelatinous texture it develops when chilled. It is a wonderful example of what can be achieved through proper cooking techniques without the need for artificial thickeners or additives.

Will you sell the broths frozen, refrigerated, or utilise specialised hot-filling or aseptic packaging?

All Soul Ladle products are sold frozen. We deliberately chose freezing as our preservation method because it allows us to maintain the integrity, flavour and quality of our products without relying on artificial preservatives. Once cooked, the stocks are rapidly chilled using a commercial blast chiller. We then follow a controlled packaging process before freezing the finished products.

Our products are packed in food-grade packaging designed for frozen storage, and we maintain a frozen cold chain through distribution.

What protocols do you put in place to test the shelf life of your broths?

Food safety is one of our highest priorities. We are currently working with Atyab International Services in Oman towards HACCP certification, which will further formalise our food-safety management systems. Our production procedures include temperature monitoring, controlled chilling and freezing, hygiene and sanitation practices, traceability and appropriate storage procedures. We have also done all appropriate laboratory and microbiological testing.

Our frozen products carry a stated shelf life of 12 months when stored under the specified frozen conditions. We also provide customers with clear storage, thawing and handling instructions because food safety does not end when the product leaves our kitchen.

Is this a home business or a commercial food manufacturing unit?

Soul Ladle is not a home-based business. We are an Omani registered business with the licensed activity of producing stocks and broths, and our products are made in our dedicated commercial production kitchen in Muscat. From the outset, we made a conscious decision to establish the business as a professional food-production operation – as this type of business does not have a ‘home business’ option for health and safety reasons.

How does your production setup comply with Muscat Municipality food safety requirements?

Our kitchen has been established specifically for commercial food production, and food safety has been a major consideration in the design of our workflow, selection of equipment and production procedures.

We have systems for controlled receiving and storage of raw ingredients, separation of raw and cooked food handling, temperature monitoring, rapid chilling, sanitation, etc.

Since your ultimate goal is to inspire people to take up healthy cooking, how will you market this product as an educational tool rather than just a grocery item?

Education is a very important part of what we want Soul Ladle to achieve. One of the biggest misconceptions about stock is that it is only used for making soup, and we want to change that. A good stock can be used in so many ways, from traditional rice dishes and stews to risotto, pasta sauces, ramen, gravies, braised dishes and everyday family meals.

Through our Instagram account, demonstrations, collaborations and community events and markets, we share recipes, cooking tips and practical ideas that show customers how easy it is to incorporate our products into their daily cooking.

Will you rely on direct-to-consumer delivery via a subscription model, or do you plan to partner with local organic markets?

We are already operating through a combination of direct-to-consumer sales and selected retail and distribution partnerships. We offer direct deliveries to customers in Muscat and have also developed relationships with partners including Al Marsa Gourmet and iO Eats and Saladicious in Salam Square.

At the same time, we are exploring opportunities with other distributors in Oman, nutritionists, dietitians and other businesses that share our focus on quality ingredients. Maintaining the frozen cold chain is essential, so we are selective about the partners we work with.

Have you calculated your Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), and what is your target pricing margin to ensure the broth is affordable?

Yes, we’ve developed detailed costing models for all our products, taking into account everything from raw materials and packaging to production and distribution costs. Interestingly, when we first started, the conflict and economic uncertainty in the Middle East had already begun affecting the cost of some of our raw materials, particularly beef bones and certain vegetables. However, we made the decision to absorb those additional costs rather than pass them on to our customers.

As the business grows, we hope to achieve greater efficiencies in production and sourcing, which will help us manage costs without sacrificing quality. For now, our intention is to maintain our existing retail prices for as long as we reasonably can.

What inspired or motivated you to choose this off-beat concept?

We both love food, and we have always been very particular about what goes into it. You could buy stock cubes and packaged stocks, but we couldn’t find the kind of proper stock and bone broth that we wanted to use ourselves, made locally from real ingredients without unnecessary additives.

Our grandmothers and great-grandmothers understood broth. Almost every culture has some version of it. It has been part of family cooking for generations, whether for nourishment, comfort or simply making food taste better. Somewhere along the way, life became faster and most of us stopped having the time to spend hours making stock from scratch. So we thought, why don’t we do the time-consuming part?

We believe there is enormous potential for this category in Oman, not just because of the growing interest in protein, collagen and wellness, but because a good stock is fundamentally such a useful ingredient.

We want to make cooking with real ingredients easier for busy households, encourage people to think differently about the food they consume and demonstrate that an Omani company can develop and produce a high-quality specialised food product locally. If someone can open their freezer, take out one of our stocks and turn whatever they have at home into a delicious meal, then we are doing exactly what we set out to.