Thanksgiving Recipe Guide: Choosing the Best Chicken Broth

Frontier, Progresso, Meijer Naturals

Chicken broth is a Thanksgiving recipe staple. In fact, chicken broth is one of the most common ingredients in dinner recipes. But chicken broths are not all created equal. Most are yellow dyed and full of junk. Here are the best brands of broth to serve in your Thanksgiving, Christmas and holiday meals and year round.

You might be thinking right now, c'mon, it's just chicken broth. How bad can it be? Well, for starters, yellow dye, a common ingredient in commercial chicken broth and a carcinogen, has been linked with liver problems such as scerosis of the liver and cancer. MSG, or monosodium glutamate, another common ingredient in chicken broth can cause headaches as does MSG in another form, hydrolyzed vegetable protein. The biggest problem with many chicken broths is that they are artificially flavored sodium laden junk.

A good chicken broth will not be yellow and salty. The better chicken broths contain carrot juice, onion juice, garlic and other vegetable extracts. My favorite brands of chicken broth and soup stock isProgresso and Meijer Naturals (available in Meijer grocery stores only). Swansons' Natural Goodness is decent also.

I actually don't use chicken broth as much as I do vegetable stock. Vegetable stock is a blend of vegetable broths with no GMO or bioengineered products. Vegetable stock contains no high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated fats or artificial sweeteners. It's gluten-free and uses sea salt in place of table salt. Vegetable stock is the perfect choice for vegetarians, vegans and those with gluten intolerance. Vegetable stock is a perfect substitution for chicken or beef broth, stock or buillion cubes.

My favorite brand of vegetable stock comes from Frontier. Frontier brand is sometimes available in grocery stores, but is mostly found in health food stores or organic cooperatives like North Farm. Happily, I discovered that Amazon does sell Frontier products. Frontier also makes other healthy broths and soups. I buy the one pound bag of powdered broth and it lasts for quite some time.