Trader Joe’s Broth Taste Off: Organic Chicken vs Free Range Chicken vs Organic Hearty Vegetable

Nobody tells you that hosting the holidays is mostly a broth logistics problem.

Stuffing needs it. Gravy needs it. The mashed potatoes need a splash when somebody (me) overworks them into paste. The turkey soup on Black Friday needs about a gallon of it. Every year I end up making three emergency runs to Trader Joe’s the week before Thanksgiving, and every single time I stand in front of that wall of cartons with zero memory of which one I liked last year.

So this year I’m fixing that. For you, and honestly mostly for me. I grabbed three of the most popular broths Trader Joe’s carries, lined them up on the counter, and had a little taste off.

Heads up: this post has an affiliate link to a cookbook I love. If you buy through it I may earn a little something, which will almost certainly be spent on more broth.

First, a word on how big this shelf actually is. TJ’s carries chicken, vegetable, beef and turkey broths, and I counted four different versions of chicken broth alone. Four! I narrowed it down to these three:

• Organic Free Range Chicken Broth
• Free Range Chicken Broth
• Organic Hearty Vegetable Broth

All three are $2.19 for a 32 fl oz carton, so price isn’t going to break the tie here. Flavor is.

The dietary stuff, because I know you’re checking

The Organic Hearty Vegetable Broth is the overachiever of the group: vegan, organic and gluten free. If you’ve got a plant based teenager or a vegan cousin coming for Thanksgiving, this is the carton that lets you make one batch of stuffing everybody can actually eat. No separate little “special” pan in the corner.

The Organic Free Range Chicken Broth is organic and gluten free. The plain Free Range Chicken Broth is the one that’s not organic, if that matters at your house.

Kosher folks, I’m not going to guess on this one. Flip the carton over and look for the symbol before you build your whole holiday menu around it.

Organic Free Range Chicken Broth: the winner, even though it looks weird

In my photo it’s the one on the left. The pale, kind of milky, cloudy one. I know. It looks like someone rinsed out a mixing bowl into it. When I make stock at home from chicken bones it never comes out cloudy like that, and I still don’t totally understand why this one does.

Don’t let that scare you off, though, because this was the best tasting of the three and it wasn’t really close. It’s made with organic onions, carrots and celery along with the chicken, and you can taste them. It has that full, rounded, chicken soup kind of flavor. The kind where you catch yourself drinking it out of a mug while standing over the stove. If you want something that tastes the way chicken stock is supposed to taste, this is your carton.

The only reason to skip it is if you need a clear broth. Making something where you want to see the noodles through the liquid? This one’s going to let you down visually. Flavor wise, no complaints at all.

Free Range Chicken Broth: a blank canvas (plus a little onion powder)

Here’s the funny part. You’d think the only difference between these two chicken broths would be the word “organic” on the front. Nope. Flip it over and the ingredient list is basically water and chicken with a dash of onion powder. That’s about it.

And it tastes like that. It’s stripped down chicken stock. Chickeny, sure, but it’s missing the vegetable backbone that makes the organic one taste like soup. On its own it’s thinner and a little flat.

But I don’t actually think that’s a bad thing, depending on what you’re doing. If you like to doctor things up your own way (a parmesan rind, a bay leaf, some garlic, whatever is slowly dying in your crisper drawer) this is a great starting point because it isn’t fighting you. It’s also clearer, so it wins on looks.

Just know it’s not organic, in case that bugs you.

Organic Hearty Vegetable Broth: fine, but “hearty” is doing a lot of work

This was my least favorite of the three, and I think the name set me up. “Hearty” made me expect this deep, roasty, punch you in the face veggie flavor. What I got was… pleasant. Mild. Next to two chicken broths it just tasted thinner and less full bodied.

Then I had to remind myself what broth is actually for. Most of the time it’s the base you’re building on, not the star of the show. You don’t want your broth bossing your risotto around. In that job this one does fine, and if you’re cooking vegetarian or vegan it’s a solid swap for chicken broth in soups, grains and stuffing. Sauté some onions and garlic first and honestly nobody at the table is going to notice.

The honest truth about boxed broth

None of these is going to beat homemade stock. Not even close. If you’ve ever simmered a turkey carcass on the stove the day after Thanksgiving, you know exactly what I mean. If you want to give it a shot, Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything is the book I’d hand you. His stock is basically “put stuff in a pot and leave it alone,” which is my favorite kind of recipe.

But real talk, who has time for that in December? Between work, school pickups, and figuring out where twelve people are going to sit, homemade stock drops pretty far down the list. That’s what these cartons are for. The pinch, the big batch, the “oh no the gravy is way too thick” moment. For $2.19, they’re pretty darn good for what they are.

Portion reality check

A 32 ounce carton is four cups. A typical stuffing recipe wants two to four cups, gravy wants another couple, and a big pot of soup can easily eat six or eight. If you’re hosting, buy more than you think you need. I always do and I always use them. Unopened cartons just sit in the pantry until January, which here in the Pacific Northwest is peak soup season anyway. (So is October. And March. Let’s be honest, it’s always soup season up here.)

Final verdict

Organic Free Range Chicken Broth ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (eight out of ten) Best tasting of the bunch. Cloudy, weird looking, delicious. My pick for gravy, stuffing, and anything where the broth actually matters.

Free Range Chicken Broth ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (seven out of ten) Plain and clean. Grab this one if you like to season things your own way or you need a clearer broth.

Organic Hearty Vegetable Broth ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (seven out of ten) Milder than I hoped, but it’s the vegan, organic and gluten free one, which makes it the easy choice when you’re feeding a mixed crowd.

So which carton lives in your pantry? And has anyone figured out why the organic one is so cloudy? Tell me in the comments, it’s been bugging me for weeks.

---

Organic Free Range Chicken Broth · $2.19 / 32 fl oz Gluten Free · Organic

Free Range Chicken Broth · $2.19 / 32 fl oz Gluten Free

Organic Hearty Vegetable Broth · $2.19 / 32 fl oz Gluten Free · Organic · Vegan