For most avid home cooks, chicken broth is a pantry staple. Along with its cousin chicken stock, it’s an essential ingredient in many soups, stews, and sauces (including Thanksgiving gravy), and using it in place of water is an easy way to add depth of flavor to whatever you’re cooking, including beans and grains. While the thought of having homemade chicken broth readily available at all times is nice, it’s simply not realistic for many people—including our editors!—who have busy lives and want to get dinner on the table quickly. That’s where store-bought chicken broth comes in.
As with most of our favorite ready-made items, not all chicken broth is made equal. To find the very best chicken broth for all the holiday cooking ahead of us, we pulled together 11 different store-bought options and sampled them in our most recent taste test. Our executive editorial director Tess poured each sample into cups, then had our tasters sip each without knowing which brands they were trying. After tasting our way through 11 different chicken broths, we found one we’d be happy to use in our stuffing, gravy, green bean casserole, and more.
Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez
The Criteria
Great chicken broth doesn’t have to be good enough to drink on its own, but it should smell and taste like an actual chicken was involved in the making of said broth. It should be nice and clear, with just enough body to lightly coat your mouth without feeling greasy. Aromatics like onions, carrots, and celery are welcome, but shouldn’t overwhelm the flavor of poultry. And though it should be flavorful, it shouldn’t be overly salty, especially if you’re planning on making a sauce that needs to be reduced. A broth with just the right amount of salt for sipping can turn inedible when too much liquid is removed.
Overall Winner
Swanson Chicken Broth
A surprise to no one: Our editors like chicken broth that has body and is well-seasoned with salt. Our senior social media editor Kelli celebrated the fact that she could actually taste the chicken: “It has flavor!” Like Kelli, I appreciated that I could actually taste some herbs, vegetables, and—yes—chicken here. Though we all enjoyed this one on its own, we also all recognized that it might be a touch too salty to cook with. Indeed, despite the fact that this product is labeled “33% less sodium than our regular product,” it still contains 570mg of sodium per cup of broth, compared to 90mg in the low-sodium product we recommend below. Our editorial director Daniel liked the overall flavor, but called the level of salt “worrying,” and said, “You can’t reduce too much before it will overly concentrate.” Like Daniel, I noted that while the broth was nicely seasoned, I could see it making it a dish a little salty. This, however, was a selling point for our associate editorial director Megan, who thought it was a good basic broth for a variety of uses: “It just kinda tastes like vaguely chickeny salt, and is really inoffensive.”
Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez
The Best Low-Sodium Broth
Imagine Low-Sodium Free-Range Chicken Broth
This broth had a pleasant golden hue and smelled very much like alliums. Daniel thought this had “more aroma than almost any other,” describing it as “chickeny” with a “hint of body.” Similarly, Megan thought this broth was “intensely chickeny,” and felt that it was thicker than the other broths we sampled. Of all the broths we sampled, this one had the fewest ingredients and consisted of just chicken stock, chicken flavor (from organic chicken), and sea salt. If you plan on reducing broth for a pan sauce or want a neutral base for everyday cooking, we recommend using this, as it has a poultry-forward flavor while also containing minimal salt.
The Contenders
- 365 Organic Chicken Broth, Low Sodium
- Aneto Chicken Broth, Low Sodium
- Bonafide No Salt Added Chicken Broth
- Cento Chicken Broth
- College Inn Chicken Broth
- Imagine Free Range Chicken Broth, Low Sodium
- Kirkland Chicken Sipping Bone Broth
- Pacific Foods Organic Chicken Broth, Low Sodium
- Progresso Chicken Broth, Low Sodium
- Swanson Lower Sodium Chicken Broth
- Trader Joe’s Low Sodium Chicken Broth
Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez
In Conclusion
In terms of pure flavor, we all enjoyed Swanson’s the most, which is pleasantly savory and has nice body. We do, however, recognize that most people won’t be sipping chicken broth on its own, and instead will use it as an ingredient in their cooking. Our editors generally prefer cooking with low-sodium or no-salt-added broth and it’s what we recommend in most of our recipes if you are using store-bought broth, as it allows us to season our food to taste and doesn’t run the risk of becoming overly salty when reduced. Our favorite low-sodium broth came from Imagine, which contains just three ingredients and has a robust chicken flavor. Both of our winning picks kept the ingredients basic: While some of the other broths we tried contained ingredients like yeast extract, corn protein, or maltodextrin (which is often used as a thickener or stabilizer in consumer packaged goods), our favorite broths contained just chicken, “natural” chicken flavor, water, and aromatics.
Our Testing Methodology
All taste tests are conducted with brands completely hidden and without discussion. Tasters taste samples in random order. For example, taster A may taste sample one first, while taster B will taste sample six first. This is to prevent palate fatigue from unfairly giving any one sample an advantage. Tasters are asked to fill out tasting sheets ranking the samples for various criteria. All data is tabulated and results are calculated with no editorial input in order to give us the most impartial representation of actual results possible.
