I have made a great number of stocks, all of them with the improvisational and scarcity-focused spirit of a preindustrial nonna. And despite my lack of actual nonna skills, plus the questionable age and quality of ingredients used, none of them were bad.
So you can imagine my shock and confusion when, after tasting 12 supermarket chicken stocks, barely any of them were good.
I did the taste test at Sydney restaurant Ho Jiak Town Hall with four chefs who regularly make and use stocks: Junda Khoo (the executive chef and co-owner of Ho Jiak), Justin Narayan (the former MasterChef Australia winner and owner of Juzzy’s Tacos), David Chan (the head chef and owner of Sun Ming) and Della Zhang (the head chef and co-owner of Parliament on King), plus a friend – and Guardian Australia staffer – Ann Ding.
We blind tasted 12 liquid chicken stocks (if a brand sold products marketed as “bone broths” as well as “stocks”, both were included in the test), heated and served into cups. Each stock was scored based on how good it was as an instant soup base, and how good it would be to cook with. There was no overall winner, as is usually the case with Guardian Australia taste tests, but the scores were aggregated to determine the best stock to use as an instant soup base, and the best stock for cooking, as well as the best value product.
This is what we learned: there seemed to be no relationship between the price or saltiness of a stock and its final score (I had assumed the saltier the stock, the tastier it would be and the higher it would score). Products advertised as stocks were comprehensively better than those advertised as bone broths (for that reason, most of the bone broths have been omitted from the final results).
We finished the taste test by trying a stock Khoo makes for his Ho Jiak restaurants. It came as a welcome reminder that stocks can and should be savoury, rich, simple and chickeny – and that even the most basic homemade stock will out-compete almost any store-bought product.
Best value, and best for instant soup bases
Chef’s Cupboard Simply Stock Chicken Flavour 1L, $1.79 ($0.18 per 100ml), available at Aldi
Score: 7.5/10
At 601mg of sodium per 100ml this was easily the saltiest and also the most savoury stock we tasted. It’s how I imagine a Maggi stock cube would taste, like years of engineering have gone into the liquid actualisation of the word “tasty”. Chan described it as more “Asian” in flavour than the other stocks, like “MSG … but not very chickeny”, he wrote. A wise pickup, it was the only stock to list soy sauce as an ingredient (none of the others had “chicken extract” either). Like many of the other stocks, it had a noticeable vegetable flavour, with many reviewers commenting on the celery-like aroma. I’d be happy to drop some noodles in for an instant meal but it’s tricky to cook with – reduce it too much and it’ll be too salty to use.
Best for cooking
The Goods Free Range Chicken Bone Broth 400ml, $9.99 ($2.50 per 100ml), available at Harris Farm
Score: 7.5/10
I thought this taste test would be boring. Aren’t most store-bought stocks mellow and mildly chickeny with a hint of carrot, onion or celery? The exact same flavour as the stocks you, me and most home cooks have tasted a hundred times? How would we score 12 products that had scarcely a difference between them? I didn’t need to worry because, bizarrely, there was only one stock that tasted like that: this one. Because of that, an easy winner in the category of best stock to cook with.
The rest
Massel Salt Reduced Chicken Style Stock 1L, $4.20 ($0.42 per 100ml), available at major supermarkets
Score: 7/10
The only ingredients in this stock are (in order) water, salt, sugar, maltodextrin, “natural vegetable flavours”, yeast extract and turmeric. Unsurprisingly, the only chicken stock with literally no chicken delivered vastly different opinions among the reviewers. Khoo guessed it might be seaweed-based and, because it was so light in flavour, voted it the most versatile. Narayan wrote it was safe, balanced, vegetabley and a little “yeasty”. Ding and Zhang picked up some sweetness – maybe from carrot or corn they guessed (there are no actual vegetables in this). I thought it was a bit stale.
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Moredough Kitchens Premium Chicken Stock 500ml, $7.99 ($1.60 per 100ml), available at Harris Farm and Woolworths
Score: 6/10
Narayan wrote this tasted like a “standard stock” but smelled like potato and gravy. He wasn’t the only one on that gravy train – three others said the stock gave them “KFC” vibes. Some swore it was spiked with dried shiitake mushrooms but the only other ingredients were onion, carrot and celery, “natural chicken flavour” and chicken glace (concentrated stock). The only explanation I could think of is the glace (Moredough was the only stock to list this in the ingredients). Maybe it delivers a different kind of savouriness?
Maggie Beer Natural Chicken Stock 1L, $9 ($0.90 per 100ml), available at major supermarkets
Score: 5.5/10
With its illustrated packaging and celebrity brand name, Maggie Beer promises a special experience, the stock equivalent of a cashmere scarf and Aesop facial spray. Sadly it just tastes like a chicken frame has been placed in a large pot of water and removed as soon as it reaches boiling point. As Zhang wrote: “Very mild. Too bland … OK as a base if you’re cooking with spices, herbs and flavours added.” You could say it fulfils the basic requirements of being a chicken stock but when I scored 51% in my year 10 maths exam, it didn’t seem important to my teacher that I got over 49; the point was when I promised to be good, I sucked.
Fodmapped For You! Free Range Chicken Bone Broth 500ml, $8.90 ($1.78 per 100ml), available at Woolworths
Score: 5/10
When we lined all the stocks up at the end of the taste test to compare colour, cloudiness and opacity, two stocks stood out. This, and Chef’s Cupboard Bone Broth, looked like little cups of beef pho among a conveyor belt of ginger beers and turmeric teas. The colour, Vegemite-like smell and saltiness (only Massel, Chef’s Cupboard and Campbell’s had a higher sodium content) led many reviewers to guess it was a mock beef stock. Like many of the more expensive brands, this had a touch of sourness from apple cider vinegar, which annoys me. Let me adjust the acidity.
Campbell’s Real Stock Chicken 1L, $4.50 ($0.45 per 100ml), available at major supermarkets
Score: 3/10
This was universally panned. Narayan wrote: “It’s just weird, no real flavour, false.” Others wrote “artificial”, while Ding said it tasted like “there is a heap of umami-fiers in there. Not a lot of depth. Salty as f.” She’s right, rather than chicken bones, yeast extract brings the umami, and per gram, this is as sodium-packed as a packet of chips. Only Chef’s Cupboard, one of the winners, had a higher sodium content but at least that tasted like a well-seasoned soup – the Campbell’s was just salty. Before the taste test, we’d all used this product in our cooking, and did so happily, so the fact this bombed so hard was just confusing. Maybe the real takeaway here is, if you want to upgrade your cooking, even a low-scoring stock can deliver better results than simply water. Life is never simple.
The Stock Merchant Chicken Bone Broth 500ml, $12.99 ($2.60 per 100ml), available at Harris Farm and Woolworths
Score: 3/10
Several of the stocks we tried had an unusual smell, like pencil shavings and prawn heads. When it’s faint, as it was with Moredough, it’s acceptable, but when it’s powerful, as with The Stock Merchant, it verges on offensive. Ding described it as medicinal and questioned how a stock could deliver such a bitter aftertaste. Narayan said it smelled like “pool water”. No one said it tasted chickeny. In a world where seemingly countless things “taste like chicken”, it’s unforgivable that a product literally made from chicken does not.