crowmanyclouds, I’m sure the bone broth recipe you posted is delicious, but it looks very complicated-- I have to admit I could not make heads nor tails out of it 
How have I never noticed this?!?
You have to have skin in the game.
Don’t feel bad. Me neither.
I had even wondered about that very odd name and how it was that I knew of no other products they made. They seemed an unusually one-trick pony compared to other brands of packaged food.
I only learned of the ‘College Inn’ pun just this past January, thanks to Telemark in another chicken stock thread:
It’s their stock in trade.
You might say that their focus on stocks and broths soupercedes all else.
Or, you might not 
Too many puns will spoil the broth for sure.
Huh. I get a nice chickeny broth. Especially if i use the carcasses of the pastured chicken i can buy during the summer.
Well, I went shopping today and saw Kettle & Fire brand classic chicken flavor bone broth, so in the interest of finding out what the best commercially produced bone broth has to offer, I bought a 32oz box.
I thought the Pacific Foods brand I linked to in my OP was pricey at $6.79 per 32oz container. This Kettle & Fire brand was $13.49! By way of comparison, Swanson has a ‘bone broth’ which is only 4.79 per 32oz. And their regular chicken stock (which probably isn’t a lot different than their ‘bone broth’) is only like $2.99 or 2 for $4.
I never would have paid so much for commercial bone broth except to fight my ignorance on how good a commercial brand can be. I doubt I’ll buy Kettle & Fire brand again, even if it tastes like the very essence of fresh roasted chicken in liquid form, and sets up in the fridge overnight like aspic. I’ll report back on my findings later this week, both on the flavor and mouthfeel, and if it turns gellified overnight in the fridge.
Oh, I’m not saying it’s not possible. It’s just not as easily produced as broth/stock made using beef or pork bones.
If I want to make bone broth, I go to the Asian butcher and buy a bag of big beef bones for three dollars that weighs perhaps two pounds. They are fairly expensive at other grocery stores. They sell mostly meat-plucked chicken carcasses at about the same price.
I don’t often use commercial bone broth but I doubt it has the same bone to liquid ratio as the good stuff. I would guess that they might depend on salt, msg and “beef flavour” instead. (I have nothing against these ingredients but homemade is better independent of the gelatinousness).
So I warmed up a cup of the Kettle & Fire bone broth and I’m sampling it now. First impression-- it’s very dark in color, almost brown, and opaque. This I took to be a good sign.
The taste-- though it’s not described as being low in sodium, it seems to be lower than I like so I added a bit of salt. I’m kind of a saltaholic though, so YMMV there. Otherwise, there’s an odd flavor to it I can’t put my finger on. Not that it tastes bad, necessarily, just different than any other bone broth I’ve tried. The ingredients list is pretty varied, with some ingredients seemingly a bit out of the ordinary for flavoring chicken broth, like fennel, shiitake mushrooms, and tamarind paste. I get the addition of mushrooms, probably to boost umami, but fennel and especially tamarind paste seem like odd additions.
Organic Chicken Bone Broth (water, organic chicken bones, organic onions, organic carrots, organic fennel, organic leeks, organic apple cider vinegar, organic thyme, organic shiitake mushroom, organic tamarind paste, organic bay leaf)
I’m not getting an impression of a silky mouthfeel one should get from a bone broth with a lot of collagen in it. I’ve refrigerated the leftover broth, so part two of my experiment / review will be to see if it gelatinizes once it chills down.
I already said, at twice the price of the already pricey Pacific Foods brand, that I probably wouldn’t buy it again even if it turned out to be the best bone broth I ever tasted, and I wouldn’t describe it as any better than Pacific Foods’ bone broth.
Just checked this morning, after 20 hours in the fridge. Nope. No sign of turning to gelatin-- it’s as liquid as it was at room temp when I opened the package. So the collagen content is clearly low to nil.
Conclusion-- paying a ridiculously high price for commercially made ‘bone broth’ does not mean you’re getting real bone broth. I don’t think there is any commercially made ‘bone broth’ that is the real thing.
This is what I’ve long suspected. Thanks for doing the taste testing for us. I’m lucky to have a dog I cook for, so I almost always have plenty of homade broth/stock that gels, but I’ve always wondered in a pinch if any of the commercial ones could do. I suppose one can always add gelatin.
I keep a fair amount of homemade frozen stock / bone broth too, but like I said in the OP, I go through a lot of stock, so if I’m, say, making a simple weekday soup out of leftover ingredients in the fridge, I might just go with a commercial stock, and save the ‘liquid gold’ for a weekend meal.
Clearly the takeaway is, if you do use a commercial stock or broth, higher price does not equal higher quality, and don’t bother with ‘bone broth’ since it seems like they just call it ‘bone broth’ and charge more. I just now noticed in another chicken stock thread post, America’s Test Kitchen rated Swanson’s stock and broth, among the most inexpensive brand of all the ones they tested, #1, and Kettle & Fire, the super-expensive brand I just tested, as a “not recommended” (they tested stocks and broths, not so-called ‘bone broths’, but still). So I could have saved myself some money and effort on my test of the K&F brand 
. Oh well.
Swanson’s chicken stock is always in the top two for best flavor. Their other products: not so much. Especially beef stock, which seems to constantly be compared to saltwater. I don’t have freezer space for stock anymore, so when a recipe calls for beef stock, I just use Swanson’s chicken. It’s not like anyone can tell the difference.
Well, I just checked on the Kirkland chicken bone broth on the shelves, and the ingredient label now says it uses chicken bones again. So that’s nice. And I bought some more. We’ll see how it tastes.
Yeah, report back and let us know. Thanks Qadgop! Though, after my disappointing Kettle & Fire experience (where they list ‘organic chicken bones’ in their ingredient list as well) I’m skeptical. Still, if any brand is real I’d bank on Kirkland, since our track record with Kirkland products has usually been top-notch.
My wife does a Costco run every couple weeks to stock up on some staples, so I’ll let her know to pick some Kirkland bone broth up next time too, if I remember. She just went yesterday, so it’ll be awhile.
I can.
My stock is very gelatinous, and i cook it down in sauces for that rich texture as well as the flavor. But Swansons and College Inn are okay for flavor, and we often use them for matzo ball soup.