Better Than Bouillon’s Worst Flavor Would Totally Oversalt Your Dishes

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The modern home cook doesn’t always have time to craft a batch of homemade broth. That’s where Better Than Bouillon comes in. Here at Tasting Table, we’re longtime fans of the concentrated broth base paste, which comes in a variety of different flavors to suit a myriad of creative culinary needs. Still, not all BTBs are created equal — and to help steer foodies straight, we sampled a selection of those savory offerings to determine which flavors rose to the top, and which ones left us wishing for more. The results are in: In our ranking of seven popular Better Than Bouillon flavors, the brand’s Seasoned Vegetable Base placed last.

It’s worth noting that even though Seasoned Vegetable Base ranked the lowest of the offerings that we tried, it was still way more impressive than competitor brands of store-bought veggie broth, befitting BTB’s well-deserved popularity. This dark-hued darling packs a big umami punch. We appreciate that the veggie flavor doesn’t arrive bland or one-note, as many meatless, store-bought broths are sorely lacking in the dimensionality department. Here, ingredients like carrot, onion, celery, and tomato deliver on depth, bookended by the titular “seasonings” of onion powder, potato flakes, and garlic powder. While that richness rules, it’s the heavy-handed saltiness that lands Seasoned Vegetable Base at the back of the pack. This small-but-mighty ingredient has the potential to overpower your soups and others recipes in an instant, which kind of negates the “wow, so convenient” appeal of the Better Than Bouillon paste to begin with. 

We aren’t alone in our criticism. Amazon customer reviews of Better Than Bouillon’s Seasoned Vegetable Base express that the ingredient is “waaaaaaaaaay too salty,” and “overpowers in taste.” Elsewhere online, others agree. One Walmart shopper states, “Sodium Bomb. Extremely salty. Cannot use,” while another notes that the “product is too salty.” One Vitacost customer called it “a jar full of salt,” before stating, “Made a cup of it and salt was all I could taste.” Another testimonial recounts, “[I] ended up throwing 2 [quarts] of vegetable lentil soup in the garbage, it was like licking a block of salt!” 

According to a Reddit post dedicated to the product, Better Than Bouillon’s Seasoned Vegetable Base replaced the brand’s retired Roasted Vegetable Base, and commenters seem to agree that they liked the old version better. 

By our count, foodies are better off sticking to Better Than Bouillon’s Organic Roasted Chicken Base – the flavor that took first place in our ranking for its bold and complex flavor profile. For plant-based eaters, the Reduced Sodium version of the BTB’s Seasoned Vegetable Base ranked much higher, taking fourth place. Even though the reduced sodium renditions of Better Than Bouillon’s beef and chicken-flavored bases both placed lower than their full-salt counterparts, nixing just 25% of that salt content managed to improve the brand’s veggie offering tremendously, allowing the flavor of the actual vegetables to shine through with especially detectable notes of onions, carrots, celery, and tomato.