Liquid lunch: Top winter soups reviewed
It’s not essential to sweat vegetables, though soups are better when their sweetness is brought out and when they absorb the delicious butter or olive oil.
Combine a can of mixed beans or chickpeas with a roughly chopped onion and garlic, cooked bacon or chorizo, stock. and end up with a feast.
Without a blender we can mash and grate everything.
Defrosted frozen peas are great with leftover lettuce. Use squash and pumpkin with cumin or cinnamon for a warm flavour.
Add a healthy drizzle of olive oil before serving to get the best nutritional value from the oil.
Natural yoghurt is delicious on top of hot soup. Mix it first with a grated clove of garlic and a teaspoon of olive oil for extra richness and flavour.
This week we sought out new soups and flavours — anything that jumped at us from the shelves.
We were impressed with all those featured here, and with the choice on the shelves.
It was difficult to find a real winner as different blends of flavours appealed in different ways, so all of those featured here were winners, not just for flavour, but for their low sugar, salt, chemical additives and nasty synthetic flavours.
This silky blend of organic spinach, peas, broccoli, celery and onions has a fresh summery hint of mint which pleased all tasters.
Dairy and gluten-free, the colour is a dull green, but tasters saw this as a plus instead of added colour. The light thickening is provided by the peas which deliver protein along with the chicken stock.
Tasters appreciated the fresh flavours, low salt and olive oil. Health wise, it scored well too.
Decent chunks of salmon are noticeable with smaller pieces of smoked and unsmoked white fish, potato, carrot, onion, fennel and leek.
The sauce is made from water and shellfish stock given substance with cream and further thickened with gluten-free flour.
The overall effect is of chunks sitting in a mildly flavoured milky sauce which one taster found too bland, but a tiny amount of salt improved it to his taste. Delicious.
This rich soup went down well with all tasters for its taste of wild mushrooms as well as hearty slices of oyster, chestnut, shiitake and portobellos giving it good bite.
Onions and cream add to the creamy texture, but it is also thickened with maize starch, which slightly takes away from the natural texture.
Sugar and salt are low. A delicious soup.
This decent-sized pot is substantial with cannellini and borlotti beans in a tomato base which is thickened slightly with flour.
There is carrot and celery and 3% shredded kale, which makes us feel virtuous. E742e is the only additive used to thicken, sugars at 2.5% are still low enough with salt at 0.5%.
Well-spiced with garlic, pepper and a little fennel, the result was a tasty, substantial soup liked by tasters.
A more integrated thicker soup than the Kinsale Bay chowder, this one has noticeable, slightly hard potato pieces, along with added carrot and onion.
The smoky flavour does not overpower the haddock or salmon and rice flour is the thickener of the vegetable stock. Salt at 0.7% is not overdone.
It all works well. Tasters agreed they would prefer this substantial soup to other ready meals for easy supper.
A decent sized pot for the money, this is made in Britain. It’s a spicy soup from the addition of ginger, curry powder, mango chutney, turmeric (the current healthy spice), cumin, smoked paprika and others.
What pleased tasters most about this was the slightly thick, silky texture. The taste was mild and would make a good base for meat and fish for an easy supper dish.
Made in Kilkenny, bringing us a taste of Bangkok, the first hit of galangal, lime and coconut is enticing. There is plenty of chicken, rice, green beans, all with a hint of chilli which is warming.
The base is cream and there is more thickening with modified maize starch, but not too much, and plenty of other interesting ingredients.
Salt at 0.59% is low enough and sugars are low. A meal in itself, this is a satisfying potful.
With no list of ingredients except a note that vegetarian stock is used, we tasted a base of deliciously fresh tomatoes, vegetables and herbs blended to a creamy, smooth, pulpy soup with tomato the dominant flavour.
Liked by tasters, it would make a good base to add fish, meat and more vegetables for an easy supper. No thickeners or chemical additives, and not salty or sweet.
We bought this frozen from the shop/ restaurant on Princes Street, Cork.
