Tasty, yet canned? Is that possible for soup? With the cold weather approaching, folks are stocking up for blustery days.
For years canned soups had the reputation of tasting like the cans they came in with ingredients which had succumbed to the heating and shaking most companies subject them to. Plus there was the added concern about the amount of sodium, effectively enough to begin the mummification process on your innards. But, hey, what’s that compared to a long shelf life?
Vegetarian vegetable soups are the hardest to find since some vegetable soups include chicken or beef stock, or beef fat. Since vegetable soup has long been a favorite of mine, a blind test taste panel was assembled to taste eight varieties of canned vegetable soup commonly found on grocery shelves. Sure the floating letters in one soup were a dead giveaway, but we stand by our conclusions. I will leave the calories and sodium counting to the nutritionists, and the carb counting to dieters. To me and the rest of the informal panel, it’s all about taste.
The Best:
Wolfgang Puck’s Organic Soup: Thick Hearty Vegetable I greedily enjoyed a lusciously dense spring pea soup in one of Puck’s restaurants years ago, and although this product is not in that league, for a canned soup it is quite good. Puck’s has an excellent combination of potatoes, green beans, cabbage, corn, peas in an organic (certified) vegetable stock.
Campbell’s Select Chef Inspired Soup, Vegetable Recipe #3 Campbell’s surprised us with this one. This is a flavorful chicken-stock soup filled with potatoes, carrots, celery, tomatoes, corn, pea, green beans. The corn syrup is still here, but this one is a winner.
Health Valley Fat Free Soup 14 Garden Vegetable A very good soup whose only drawback is the faint taste of can coming at you. This one is loaded with carrots, celery, potatoes, peas, green beans, white beans, northern beans, and flavored with honey and cayenne.
The Rest:
Campbell’s Condensed Soup Classics Vegetable made with Beef stock (This is the one you add water to and only costs $1) This is the alphabet soup that kids love since they can spell out their names in their soup and giggle. New is the pop-top. We found the soup to be too sweet and without seasoning, while the vegetables were mushy. Giggle factor aside, this soup failed the taste test.
Campbell’s Kitchen Classic Soup, Vegetable The only saving grace here is the non-vegetable item, the pasta. Although flecked with herbs, this chicken-stock based soup’s celery, corn, potatoes, carrots, peas, corn, and green beans were bland.
Progresso Vegetable Classics Garden Vegetables. Another pop-top. This soup had kidney beans, which may account for the gelatinous ooze the vegetables lazed in rather than a clear broth. We liked the potatoes and green beans, though.
Amy’s Organic Soups Low Fat Vegetable Barley This soup has a voluminous amount of barley and an astringent taste. This is the kind of soup that gives vegan foods a bad name.
Healthy Choice Country Vegetable. Although this soup is lower in sodium than most of the others, the tomato puree-flavored broth had the typical canned soup taste. Health Valley has less sodium and tastes better.
This article appears in Dec 15-21, 2004.
