Best Chicken Broth We Found in a Taste Test

The best chicken broth is the foundation of pretty much every good homemade soup. Even if you’re making bean and kale soup or another soup doesn’t contain actual chicken meat, you still need a good, savory chicken broth as your base to bring all the flavors to life. I know it isn’t soup season (I just broke out into a sweat typing the word “soup”), but this info will come in handy very soon. Promise.

For this taste test, we were looking for chicken broth with a lot of flavor. And not just chicken flavor. While chicken stock is mostly just water infused with the flavor of chicken (bones and all), broth should taste like other stuff, too—veggies, seasonings, and actual chicken meat. Let me tell ya, store bought chicken broths taste dramatically different. From the best low sodium chicken broth to one that tastes like tasty, fatty chicken skin, this is the best tasting chicken broth at the grocery store.

Best Low Sodium

If you’re looking for the best low sodium chicken broth, you should really be checking labels. So many “low sodium” and “lower sodium” broths have just as much salt as varieties that don’t claim to be low sodium. That said, Trader Joe’s low sodium chicken broth is the only low sodium chicken broth we tasted that is actually low sodium (50 mg a cup) and actually tastes like chicken instead of just water and maybe some veggie stock. Great Value’s low sodium broth also tasted great, but that’s because it has 550 mg of sodium per serving! That’s as much as Trader Joe’s regular organic chicken broth! This is the best you can do if you want a chicken broth that’s actually low sodium.

Credit: Merc / Trader Joe’s

Rating:

8.5/10

Sporks

Best Budget

If you shop at a Kroger-owned grocery store (Fred Meyer, Baker’s, Ralphs, King Soopers, etc. etc.), this is a great budget chicken broth. It’s very fresh tasting and very vegetable forward. According to the ingredients, it contains vegetable juice concentrates like carrot, celery, and onion—and you really taste all of them. It has so much flavor it’s almost tangy. It’s quite sodium rich, but if you’re looking for lots of flavor, this is among the best store bought chicken broth out there.

Rating:

8.5/10

Sporks

Best Vegetal

“This literally tastes like Campbell’s chicken soup,” my colleague Jordan Myrick said when they had a taste. There’s something very fresh and celery-forward about the flavor of this chicken broth that I really like. It has a lot of sodium (720 mg per serving), but that just means you won’t have to add as much to your finished soup. This is practically ready to roll—just add your fixins and simmer.  And shoutout Kettle & Fire chicken broth, which is also very bright and vegetal (AND has less sodium). This one just tasted better ultimately. If you like a very vegetable-forward chicken broth, this is the best tasting chicken broth. 

Credit: Merc / Instacart

Rating:

9/10

Sporks

Best Fatty Flavor

If you unabashedly devour the crackly skin that encases a roasted chicken, this is the best chicken broth for you. O Organics has a nice, fatty flavor that’s reminiscent of chicken skin. Other broths we tried that leaned fatty or oily tended to taste stale (lookin’ at you, Swanson), but this broth tastes more like freshly fried chicken. This would be the perfect broth to use a base for wonton soup.

Credit: Merc / Albertsons

Rating:

9/10

Sporks

Best of the Best

When I tell you this is the best chicken broth by a mile, I’m not lying! It’s so flavorful and so fresh tasting. It leans chickeny rather than vegetal, and has an unbelievable roasted chicken flavor. It tastes like the drippings from a rotisserie chicken. I’m also pleased to report that this has a totally reasonable amount of sodium, 550 mg per serving, which is low sodium by some brands’ standards. Jordan brought this home after our taste test and made a pot of chicken noodle soup and raved about it. It’s the best tasting chicken broth and it’s only costs about two bucks a carton. 

Credit: Merc / Trader Joe’s

Rating:

10/10

Sporks

Other products we tried: Kettle & Fire Chicken Broth, Great Value Chicken Broth, Swanson Chicken Broth, Swanson Reduced Sodium, Great Value Reduced Sodium, Kettle & Fire Low Sodium, Sprouts Organic Free Range, Bona Fide No Salt Added, Signature Select, Signature Select Reduced Sodium, Simple Truth Low Sodium

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