New product – Swanson’s beef stock

Few products bring out the disdain in serious foodies faster than canned broth, especially beef broth. Cook’s Illustrated banned it from the test kitchen for several years until beef broths improved somewhat, but even the reassessment was tepid in its few recommendations. Michael Ruhlman doesn’t like either variety in a can and says we’re better off using water. I can’t wait to see what they say about this new product and competing stocks that have been introduced by other companies.

But Swanson’s is the one I tried; the company has also introduced a chicken stock but I haven’t tried it yet. I do make chicken broth and stock from scratch — it’s a breeze in a pressure cooker — but roasting bones and vegetables for beef stock, which I rarely use anyway, is not on my mental checklist. So like most home cooks, when I need beef broth I reach for a can, always fat-free and reduced sodium. And it really isn’t ideal.

This stock, also called brown stock, is much better. Here’s what I did. I shook both containers — the stocks only come in aseptic packs, which is wise from a flavor standpoint — and poured some into those little cups, choosing white cups to better see any differences in how they look. I left them alone for an hour so they would settle and would be exactly the same temperature for my taste test. You can see they look identical; I expected the stock to be a little thicker than broth but it’s not.

Then I tasted them, sipping them plain. The difference in taste is tremendous. All the aromatics in the stock enhance the seasonings and round out the flavor. By comparison, the broth seemed almost as bland as water. The ingredients are vastly different between the two. This is the list from the can of broth:

And this is the stock. Notice the lack of caramel color to make it brown:

Is it as good as stock from scratch in a great restaurant? I seriously doubt it. But it’s much better than canned broth, which I sometimes simmer with aromatics before using, a Julia Child trick. The Swanson’s stock is as good as that, without the extra time and the aromatics in the trash.

The stock is more expensive than the broth, $3.29 for 28 ounces at an expensive store versus $1.25 for 14 ounces of broth at a less expensive store. If this were something I used often I’d probably think twice about its regular use, but for the few times a year that I need beef broth I can have beef stock now instead — and I’m going to keep an eye out for a sale.

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Tagged as: consumerism