The Best Chicken Broth

Store-bought chicken broths vary drastically from one brand to another. Which is best?Chicken broth is a pantry essential: It adds depth to hearty soups and simmering stews; it’s the backbone of rich, succulent pan sauces and gravy. 

Over the years, the words “stock” and “broth” have referred to slightly different things, but almost no manufacturers, recipes, or food sources make a distinction between the two terms; we use them interchangeably too. The vast majority of chicken broth is sold as liquid in 1-quart boxes. There are also two other common formats that both require reconstitution in boiling water: bouillon (in either powder or cubes) and concentrate or base (which has a thick, paste-like consistency).

With the help of Chicago-based market research firm Circana, we identified the top-selling chicken broth brands in the country. We sifted through their product lineups to focus on those with 400 to 700 milligrams of sodium, a range we’ve found in past evaluations to be well-balanced and flavorful—not too salty or too plain. If a brand had more than one option, we sampled them each plain (gently warmed) in a side-by-side tasting and moved forward with our favorite. We included two options from Swanson because it’s the top-selling broth in the country. That left us with a lineup of eight liquid broths, one bouillon powder, and one concentrate. We headed into the kitchen for a trio of tastings: trying each plain, stirred into Pressure-Cooker Parmesan Risotto, and simmered and reduced in All-Purpose Gravy. 

How Is Chicken Broth Made? 

While researching broths over the years, we’ve learned something surprising: Almost every broth/stock you see at the supermarket is made by a handful of commercial food manufacturers. Multinational companies, such as Symrise and Kerry Group, create broth concentrates that they sell to the broth companies you see in supermarkets. The ingredients and manufacturing process are customized to individual clients’ specifications by a team of chefs, flavor chemists, food scientists, and process engineers. They’re typically reconstituted and then boxed (or bottled or canned) into the broths you buy in supermarkets. 

When making the chicken broth concentrates, the first step is sourcing chicken meat and bones that are typically discarded by farmers after raw chicken has been processed, according to Miranda Becker, senior communications manager, North America, for Kerry Group. Large volumes of chicken meat and bones are cooked in water under high pressure to extract the flavor; sometimes the chicken is roasted (before being simmered in water) to give the broth an extra layer of compl... read more