Imagine Organic No-Chicken Broth Review

It was not that long ago when I found myself preparing a special meal of chicken fried steak, mash potatoes, gravy, and peas. The meal was for two vegetarians and one person who ate authentic meat. I must admit that the involvement that I had in cooking the authentic meat was somewhat limited because I am unfamiliar with a lot of meat cooking practices and chicken fried steak is no exception. I knew that gravy, which I planned on making from a packet and not the old fashion way, would not be vegetarian and so I needed to find a packet that was. My search in the grocery store turned up empty for a vegetarian gravy packet but I found the next best thing, vegetarian broth. More specifically I found Imagine Organic No-Chicken Broth.

This was the first time that I had found anything by the Imagine brand and honestly I did not recall hearing about them before. One thing that I do remember is tasting no-chicken foods. I have had No-Chicken Soup before; it is something that I like to keep on hand if I get a cold or something. I like the taste of it and even though I know that beef broth would be more ideal than chicken broth with gravy in this case I have to admit that I was hesitant to get no-beef broth because I have not tried it and do not particularly care for the taste of authentic beef. Of course regardless of how I felt about no-chicken soup, making no-chicken gravy with the Imagine Organic No-Chicken Broth might yield an entirely different taste.

Lucky for me turning the broth into gravy was very easy. The container had a number of suggestions of how to use the broth and they all sounded delicious but none of them were for gravy. I just slowly heated the broth and added some flour to it little by little and stirred it until it was as thick as I wanted. It did not take long at all and the taste was definitely chicken-like. I have had numerous chicken imitation foods in the last 10 plus years that I have been a vegetarian including Chik'n Wings, Tenders, Patties and Nuggets and Chik'n Cutlets by Quorn, Chik'n Patties, Nuggets, Tenders and Wings by Morningstar Farms, and Chik'n Patties and Nuggets by Boca. I was just as happy with this broth as I was with my favorites on this list. I was very glad that I had purchased it; it was around a couple of dollars. I do not recall the exact price and unfortunately misplaced the receipt before I had a chance to write about it. Thankfully I still have the container so I am able to write about all of the ingredients and nutrition facts.

The ingredients of the chicken broth were amazingly simple and very pleasing to read. The Imagine Organic No-Chicken Broth consisted of filtered water, organic onions, organic celery, organic carrots, sea salt, organic spices, either organic expeller pressed canola oil, safflower oil, or sunflower oil or a combination of the three, and organic garlic. I loved that even the spices were organic. There was not MSG or HVP added to the broth and the oil that was in it only added a trivial amount of fat. I had no complaints with ingredients, but the nutrition facts were not perfect.

Overall I have to admit that the nutrition facts for the Imagine Organic No-Chicken Broth looked really good. The container had about 4 cups of broth and 1 cup of broth is considered a serving. In a serving there is only 10 calories with 0 calories from fat. There is 2 grams of carbohydrates and one gram of protein. In the vitamins and minerals section of the nutrition facts there was 15% listed for vitamin A, 2% listed for calcium, and 2% listed for iron. This all looked good to me but I was disappointed that there was 450 milligrams of sodium. Of course as a shelf-stable item I was not surprised of its high sodium content. Like I said, overall the nutrition facts looked good.

In fact overall the entire product was good. It was not that it was particularly expensive if I remember correctly but rather is something that I do need to have on hand a lot. If I needed to get shelf-stable chicken broth that needed to be vegetarian I would definitely get Imagine Organic No-Chicken Broth again. I would recommend for anyone to try it as well. I was pleased with its overall taste and believed that it was 'chicken.' I did not use the entire carton on gravy and found it useful in a stir-fry dish that I made as well. I think I will keep my eye out for this product and brand again.