Price: $2.19
Serving: 1 cup, 8 oz
Servings per Container: About 2
Calories per serving: 150
Fat: 14%, 9g
Cholesterol: 2%, 5mg
Sodium: 20%, 480mg
Carbohydrates: 5%, 15g
Fiber: 12%, 3g
Sugars: 3g
Protein: 3g
Weight Watchers points: 3 per serving
Weight Watchers points: 6 per can

Campbell’s says:

Taryn says: The deal with Campbell’s new Select Harvest soups is that they contain no artificial flavors or MSG. Admittedly, their commercial was what got me: a blindfolded redhead describing the competitor’s soup as full of MSG and sodium something-or-other, and then tasting Select Harvest and enjoying spinach grown on a south-facing slope. Natural, slope-grown spinach sounds a heck of a lot better to me than MSG, so I decided to give Select Harvest a try.

I need to be in the mood for soup, especially in warm weather. I know it’s relatively good for you and filling and la la la, but I’d normally take a toasted sandwich over a bowl of soup any day. Maybe I’ll enjoy my sandwich with a cup of soup on the side (I’m a dunker), but soup is rarely the main player in my lunch. And I sort of wish it had stayed that way.

This is basically glorified potato soup. I can’t even call them chunks; the potatoes are more like thick squares – potato planks, if you will, and they dominate the soup. The broccoli has been cut into little slivers and acts more like green garnish than a hearty source of fiber. This was disappointing, since I love me some broccoli. (The broccoli cheddar soup at Panera Bread is creamy vegetable sex in a bowl, really, with all the crowns and stalks.) And I didn’t taste any cheese. None. It was loads of potato and a handful of broccoli sprigs floating in a creamy base. When I looked at the ingredients, after potatoes, broccoli, and a series of other things came this: “Contains 2% or less of the following: blah, blah, blah, cheese, blah,…” So that explains it. Less than two percent of my potato, broccoli and cheese soup is cheese. But I have to hand it to them for listing their ingredients accurately in the title: Potato Broccoli Cheese

Price: $2.45 (on sale)
Serving: 1/2 a box, 1 cup
Calories:140 per serving
Fat: 2%, 3g
 Saturated Fat: 5%, 1g
 Trans Fat: 0%, 0g
Cholesterol: 2%, 5mg
Sodium: 31%, 750mg
Protein: 3g
Carbohydrates: 9%, 28g
Fiber: 12%, 3g
Sugar: 3g
Weight Watchers Points: 2 Points

Campbell’s says: Mellow-sweet butternut squash. Savory herbs. There’s a little something here for each of your taste buds. No artificial flavors. No preservatives.

Abi says: Part of the reason that I’m hooked on frozen meals is that leftovers are my Kryptonite. I dread eating the same thing for two dinners in a row (or even worse lunch and dinner), so frozen meals add some variety to my eating habits.

Strangely, this habit does not hold true for three items: pizza, macaroni and cheese, and soups. Specifically, creamy vegetable based soups. With crusty bread. I could eat Au Bon Pain’s pumpkin soup every lunch for a week and still love pumpkin. Too bad there’s no way I could eat this butternut squash soup for a week.

Butternut squash is not a flavor explosion food. In fact, butternut squash, while it has a supercute name is actually pretty lame and requires either excellent technique or a lot of seasoning (sweet or savory) to make it taste like anything special. Red Peppers can be all ‘hey, I’m awesome! All you have to do is cut me intro strips and you can eat me raw! With hummus! Or in salad! Or make me into a soup! I also pair well with fajitas!’

Butternut Squash on the other hand is all ‘Hey, why don’t you almost commit accidental suicide while cutting me open, then spend a whole lot of time cooking me with cinnamon and brown sugar? Or you could uh, spend a whole lot of time cooking me and then process me with some sage and butter. Yeah!’ The apparent enthusiasm of the squash does not make it an easily vegetable (er, fruit) to work with.

On the plus side, Campbell’s put this soup in an easy-open box. You don’t even need scissors to get into it! On the downside, it is not resealable, like the boxes from Trader Joe’s. On the even further downside, this soup is not worth the nearly $5.00 per box it costs in my neighborhood. In this iteration of butternut squash soup, Campbell’s went the savory route. They also went the ‘what other stuff can we add to this soup so that it tastes somewhere near butternut squash but isn’t totally squash?’ route. And the answer to that was potato and carrot.

First four ingredients: Butternut Squash, water, potatoes, carrots

What is up with that Campbell’s? You think I couldn’t tell? You think it wasn’t obvious when the soup was thin and watery and full of tiny chunks that are obviously not butternut squash?

I’ve never felt so gypped by a soup!

Not feeling so hot after a bunch of business travel, I ate the first bowl plain, savoring it for the transitive property of warmth more than anything else. The second bowl reminded me that I didn’t think this soup was anything amazing. Lacking Sriracha or carrot-ginger creme fraiche, I added a teaspoon of brown sugar to the bowl. I also felt tempted to add a bit of sea salt, but when a package of soup provides just as much sodium as ramen, I decide to forgo the salt.

Overall, eating Cambell’s V8 Butternut Squash soup was alright, but not nearly as pleasant as an almost $5 soup should be.

Price: $1.50
Serving: 1 cup / 8oz.
Calories: 130 per serving
Fat: 3%, 2g
  Saturated Fat: 2%, 0.5g
  Trans Fat: 0%, 0g
Cholesterol: 5%, 15mg
Sodium: 38%, 920mg
Protein: 10g
Carbohydrates: 6%, 18g
Fiber: 8%, 2g
Sugar: 2g
Weight Watchers Points: 2 per serving
Weight Watchers Points: 4 per can

Campbell says: Reach for hearty Campbell’s® Chunky™. Savory soups packed with large chunks of beef, chicken or sausage, Campbell’s Chunky feeds that hunger – and leaves you feeling satisfied.

Dave says: I spent my early childhood years in rural New Jersey, the spawn of transplanted Taiwanese parents. We did what we could to blend in, and part of the strategy (other than my Dad being the minister of the county Presbyterian church) was to partake heartily of Campbell’s soup products. Some 30 years later, I still feel the draw to foods both soupy and American. And what could be more American than Beefy Steak partnered with the delectable and ever-versatile Potato?

At the crack of noon I poured the contents of my two-serving, 260-calorie can into a bowl and blasted it on HIGH. Three minutes and a quick stir later, my soup bowl was hot, brown and steaming. And if you found my choice of adjectives less than apetizing, you’ll know how I felt about this soup by the time I was done eating.

The first mouthful was actually not that bad, as it delivered no unpleasant surprises. It was indeed savory in taste. There were indeed chunks of beef steak. Chunks of potato were clearly present. What I didn’t like was the way the potatoes tasted: flat, with that paste-like starchiness. I am rather particular about potatoes, and I particularly hate the taste of potatoes that have been allowed to get cold and gluey before being reheated. I’ve had other canned soups where the potatoes did not suffer from this malady, but my serving of Chunky Steak and Potato was not one of them.

I ate around most of the potatoes and focused on the other headlining ingredient. The steak was suitably “beefy” in texture and flavor, if a little bland. This blandness, however, provided welcome respite from the oppressive “generic brown salty flavor” of the soup base. A minor delight in the form of occasional slivers of mushroom provided accents of real flavor. However, this mushroom-induced euphoria was insufficient to counteract my second issue with the soup base: a sour aftertaste that I couldn’t quite place. Vinegar? Metal? Tomato? Some kind of preservative? Sometimes sourness is good, but in this case it just made me frown. Toward the end of the meal I had grown quite weary of the flavor.

Imagine, if you will, a set of children’s crayons that represent flavors. Take the brown crayon labeled “Beef”, and the other brown crayon labeled “Beef Soup”, and use them to draw and fill-in a crude brown circle. Write SOUP under the circle, in block letters, so you don’t forget what it is. Then get the gluestick labeled “Potatoes” and apply daubs of glue with a few miserly sprinkles of “Mushroom Flavor” glitter. That’s how I feel about this soup: you can tell what it is supposed to be, but it’s just not the most convincing illusion. On first taste it’s OK, but the two aftertastes–slightly pasty potatoes and the lingering sourness of the soup base–bring it down. Maybe a few carrots and preparation on the stovetop would help it, but as-is I found the experience to be just average.

Price: $4.19
Serving: 1/6 package, 9oz.
Servings per box: 6
Calories: 360
Fat: 11%, 7g
Cholesterol: 22%, 65mg
Sodium: 34%, 820mg
Protein: 31g
Carbohydrates: 14%, 42g
Fiber: 8%, 2g
Sugar: 2g
Weight Watchers Points: 7 Points

Campbell’s says: Campbell’s perfectly blended baking sauce seasons your chicken for a moist savory meal in no time. A taste so homemade, it could only come from Campbell’s.

Abi says: Just like the dad in From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, I take the train to work every day. I even have a 10-ride ticket, though I don’t think it is redeemable for 2 child fares. Unlike the dad in From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, I make dinner. The San Francisco train station is across the street from a very nice Safeway, so if I miss my train I have time to browse the aisles for new and interesting things to review.

Too bad this chicken bake is amongst the worst things I’ve ever consumed in my life. I’ve had a lot of bad frozen meals, so I’m used to disappointment. But I also wasted $6.00 worth of fresh chicken, which sucks. I cook meat so rarely that when I do have to handle bloody animal muscles I want some delicious results.

The cooking process for this meal was something of a pain. I put some hot water in a Pyrex baking dish, added the pasta, seasoning, and Campbell’s baking sauce (which was Cream of Nothing in disguise) and stirred. I then placed raw chicken on top of the pasta and watery cream from a can (shudder), then covered the whole thing with foil and baked it for twenty minutes at 400 degrees. After the initial baking time I uncovered the whole thing, sprinkled breadcrumbs atop it and popped it back in the oven for another 10 minutes.

Those of you who know anything about chicken know that this is the stupidest way to cook chicken, ever. I basically steamed the chicken, which is a fine idea when working with broccoli or green beans, but completely idiotic when dealing with chicken. I went against my instincts, instincts that were screaming ‘You baked chicken last week and it was marinated and it only took 12 minutes!’ and ended up serving a meal that featured horrible steamed chicken covered in pointless breadcrumbs (they’re pre-browned, which is sick). And that awful chicken rested atop a pile of flavorless pasta. GARLIC chicken? Who do they think they’re kidding? Ugh.

After a few bites of the meal, George and I determined that it was completely inedible. The chicken was tough and bland and basically everything that is possible to hate about chicken. And the pasta? No flavor what so ever. I posited that perhaps it was developed for midwestern supertasters, but really nobody should be eating this.

Thank God I have the most ridiculously packed freezer at Stanford. I went to the kitchen, pulled out a box of Tandoor Chef Chicken Tikka Masala, mentally took back anything bad I ever said about the lack of rice in the dish, and tossed a couple of Trader Joe’s Naan under the broiler (which was still toasty from the worst chicken ever). The chicken tikka masala and naan were so good that my mouth waters as I write this review.

If you want to know how to make good chicken, check out these tips and recipes from Chris Kimball, the editor of Cooks Illustrated (one of my favorite magazines). And if you’re not a fan of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, you’ll find a friend in Deb at Smitten Kitchen. Though, I provide the link with a warning that after reading about S’more Pie you’ll feel the need to purchase a kitchen torch.