Soup base substitutes

The most direct swap and almost certainly in your cupboard. Both are concentrated salt plus savoury flavouring, and both dissolve into broth. What changes is character: cubes and granules generally taste saltier, drier and more obviously seasoned, with a slightly powdery finish, while a good paste base tastes rounder and more genuinely roasted because it contains actual cooked meat solids. In a stew nobody notices; in a simple broth they do.

Best for

soups, stews, gravy, rice and grains, braises

Crush cubes before adding so they dissolve evenly, and hold back the recipe's salt entirely until you have tasted the finished dish.

The cleanest and best-tasting option, and the swap most people get wrong. Ready-to-use broth is not concentrated, so it replaces the water rather than joining it. Do that and the dish tastes fuller and less salty, with more of a real simmered flavour. Add broth and the base together and you produce something that tastes like a salt lick. Boxed broth is also thinner in body, so a sauce will need a little more thickening.

Best for

soups, risotto and pilaf, pan sauces, braises, chowder

Check whether the carton says low-sodium. Regular broth is already seasoned, so taste before adding any salt.

The best flavour available and the only option with real gelatin body, which is what makes a soup feel silky and a pan sauce cling to a spoon. Reduced homemade stock tastes rounder, meatier and much less salty than any base, so the dish needs seasoning separately. If you have stock, do not bother reducing it for a soup; just use it as the liquid and season at the end.

Best for

clear soups, matzo ball soup, risotto, sauces, braises

Only reduce unsalted stock. Reducing a salted stock or a base solution concentrates the salt into something unusable.

The best vegetarian option and a genuinely good broth in its own right. It brings salt and deep savouriness in the same spoonful, which is exactly the job soup base does. The differences are visible and tasteable: miso clouds the liquid so nothing will be clear, and it is noticeably sweeter, softer and slightly beany rather than meaty. White miso is mild enough to pass in most soups; red miso is much stronger and will take over.

Best for

vegetarian and vegan soups, noodle broth, vegetable stews, glazes

Whisk it with a ladle of hot liquid first, and stir it in near the end. Hard boiling dulls miso and makes it taste flat.

For meat-based dishes this is the luxury version. It has far more roasted depth and real gelatin, so a sauce made with it gleams and coats in a way base never manages. Two practical notes: it is much less salty, so you must season separately, and it is far less concentrated by volume, so a teaspoon of base needs a whole tablespoon of demi-glace. It is also only ever beef or veal flavoured, so it is wrong in a chicken or vegetable soup.

Best for

pan sauces, beef stews, gravy, onion soup, braises

Because it is a wet, jelly-like concentrate, deduct the added volume from another liquid in a thick sauce.

The true nothing-in-the-house fallback, and it is more capable than it sounds because soy sauce provides both salt and glutamate savouriness. The catch is that it tastes and looks like soy sauce: your broth turns brown and carries a clear fermented note. Good in a mushroom soup, a noodle broth or a gravy. Unconvincing in a chicken soup or a light vegetable soup, where it reads as out of place.

Best for

mushroom soup, noodle broth, gravy, stews, emergency substitution

Use light or reduced-sodium soy sauce if the soup needs to stay pale, and add no other salt until you taste it.