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THE NIBBLE’s Gourmet News & Views
Trends, Products & Items Of Note In The World Of Specialty Foods
This is the blog section of THE NIBBLE. Read all of our content on TheNibble.com,
the online magazine about gourmet and specialty food.
Archive for Soups
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November 8, 2009 at 8:57 am
· Filed under Soups
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The new high fiber soup family from
Progresso. Photo by Erika Meller |
THE NIBBLE. |
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Just in time for the chilly weather, Progresso has released its new High Fiber Soups to warm you up while helping you with your daily fiber intake. Each of the four varieties contributes 28% of your daily value of fiber (7g/serving), with no artificial flavors or MSG. It’s a painless way to add fiber to your diet.
Chicken Tuscany with lots of Great Northern Beans, was a favorite, enhanced with a dash of sea salt and some fresh sage from our window plant.
Chicken Vegetable, possibly the most popular flavor of the group for most consumers, didn’t ring our bell as much. The broth tasted strongly of the green beans in the soup.
Creamy Tomato Basil was sweet and comforting, but we have to give it the thumbs down because the sweetness came from added sugar. If you don’t mind sugar added to your savory foods, it’s very appealing, but we think that the practice has contributed to America’s obesity and diabetes woes. It’s one of the things we keep an eye out for when we buy packaged foods.
Homestyle Minestrone was also “Nibble-ized” with a spoonful of fresh-ground Parmesan cheese that we keep in the freezer for exactly this purpose. (if it’s ground very fine by the store—not shredded—it freezes well).
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The pull-top cans are convenient for work lunches with microwaves; just transfer the contents into a mug. Learn more at ProgressoSoup.com.
Find reviews of our favorite soups, plus recipes, in our Gourmet Soups & Stocks Section.
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October 11, 2009 at 7:00 am
· Filed under Candy, Gifts, Soups
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Dried fruit and nut mixes have probably been popular since the dawn of man. It wouldn’t have taken much for a hunter-gatherer to combine some raisins from wild grapevines with crunchy nuts and deem the combination better than either food alone.
But it’s taken until recent times for fruit and nut mixes to be seasoned so deftly that the snack is better than ever. One practitioner of the art is Lambie Stout, a mom and cancer survivor from Toledo who gives 5% of the proceeds of Comfort Crunch to cancer research.
Comfort Crunch is available in four varieties including one vegan recipe (the Original). The mixes of fresh, crunchy nuts and moist dried fruits are enhanced with crystallized ginger and pepitas, chocolate-covered ginger or chocolate-covered toffee.
A healthy, indulgent snack, the chic minimalist packaging makes a yummy stocking stuffer. There’s also lovely holiday packaging that hold two bags (see the website, ComfortCrunch.com, for gift options). If you’re looking for corporate gifts, you can’t go wrong with this feel-good option.
Read our review of Comfort Crunch.
Find more of our favorite sweet snacks.
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Comfort Crunch brings tidings of comfort and joy.
Stock up for the holidays! Photo by Hannah
Kaminsky | THE NIBBLE. |
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February 7, 2009 at 9:00 am
· Filed under Recipes, Soups
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It doesn’t take much to turn a bowl of carrot
soup into something glamorous. Here, a swirl of
heavy cream, a parsley sprig and some gourmet
flatbread from Top Pick Of The Week Rustic
Bakery do the trick. |
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Take a minute to garnish, and a bowl of soup will never be “just a bowl of soup” again. Just use one or more of these garnish groups, mixing and matching as appropriate for the recipe:
- Bread: Artisan bread, crackers, croutons, flatbread, pita, toast
- Dairy: Crème fraîche, grated/shaved cheese, heavy cream, sour cream, yogurt, quark
- Herbs & Spices: Fresh herbs taste best, but dried herbs as a backup
- Fruit: Apple slices, dried berries and cherries, fresh berries, grapes, lemon and lime slices, melon balls, pear slices, diced pineapple
- Vegetables: Cooked or raw to match the soup, e.g. a broccoli floret or carrot slice atop broccoli or carrot soup |
Read the full article, with suggestions for 21 different soups.
Find garnish ideas for other types of food in our article, Garnish Glamour.
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February 5, 2009 at 10:21 am
· Filed under Diet Nibbles, Gluten-Free, Soups
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| Lovers of Kettle Cuisine, the nation’s leading premium soup brand, can feed their gluten-intolerant family and friends four new varieties of gluten-free soups, bringing the total to nine choices packed in convenient 10-ounce microwaveable bowls. Kept in the freezer, these easy-to-prepare soups are convenient workplace fare as well as a quick meal or snack at home. For family with friends (or friends of the kids) who have Celiac disease, they’re convenient to keep in the freezer as an offering.
The new flavors include Organic Carrot Soup with Coriander (organic, dairy-free & vegetarian), Organic Mushroom & Potato Soup with Cream (organic & vegetarian), Roasted Vegetable Soup (dairy-free & vegetarian), Tomato Soup with Garden Vegetables (dairy-free & vegetarian). |
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These gluten-free flavors join Angus Beef Steak Chili with Beans (dairy-free), Chicken Chili with White Beans, Chicken Soup with Rice Noodles (dairy-free & low fat), Grilled Chicken & Corn Chowder and New England Clam Chowder.Kettle Cuisine is found at retailers nationwide and is also available online for delivery anywhere in the United States from GlutenFreeMall.com.
Check out THE NIBBLE’s favorite gluten-free products.
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January 8, 2009 at 9:00 am
· Filed under Snacks, Soups, Vegetables
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| A new alternative for healthy eating on-the-go, Cool Soup makes soup “drinkable” from a bottle at room temperature or chilled. It’s a new way to fruit and vegetables without having to chop and cook. The portable plastic bottle has a nine-month shelf life. As a snack or meal replacement, it’s high in vitamins and antioxidants, low in calories and 100% natural.
Go AppetĂt is “taking soup to new places” with Cool Soup, a new category in specialty convenience foods, Drinkable Soup. The company calls its products “souperfood.” Now, when you need something nutritious on the go, and want more than a piece of fruit, yogurt or an energy bar, you can have some yummy comfort food—soup! No spoon needed, just twist the cap and drink from the 8-ounce, single serve bottle. If you want a soup and sandwich or soup and salad combo, it couldn’t be easier.
Cool Soup is low in calories and 100% natural with no preservatives, artificial colors or artificial flavors. While it is ideal to consume the soup chilled for enhanced flavor, no refrigeration is required, and they taste just fine at room temperature. We toted them our purse and backpack, the latter with an ice pack, the former without, and didn’t feel any loss of quality drinking them unchilled.
Read the full review. |
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An easy way to eat your fruits and veggies on the
go: soup that you drink from the bottle. Above:
Rich Vegetable Gazpacho. |
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October 3, 2008 at 10:50 am
· Filed under International Foods, Soups
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An easy way to eat your greens. The
crystal noodles are underneath the
veggies. Shown above: Vegetables &
Eggs variety. |
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With Long Kow’s Crystal Noodle Soup, and all you need to do is provide the boiling water and the spoon (chopsticks or a fork are helpful to manage the noodles) to enjoy a bowl of steaming noodle soup made in its own bowl in just three minutes. Savory, in four flavors, and leagues better than the other products in its genre, these soups are imported from China.
If you’ve experienced cello packets of ramen noodles or instant cups of noodle soup, (and is there anyone who hasn’t?), you know that they offer a comforting repast, but not a quality dining experience. Long Kow has upped the ante, using superior ingredients and a large enough portion to make a meal in its own bowl. Just add boiling water, and in three minutes your steaming hot meal is ready. You also need to supply an eating implement—you could slurp the soup from the bowl in a pinch, but the long noodles would present a challenge. |
Although the ingredients are freeze-dried, you’d swear they were fresh-made, from the bok choy, mushrooms and spinach to the eggs and tofu. And how satisfying those glassy bean thread noodles are in their savory broth. Well done, Long Kow!
Read the full review on TheNibble.com. |
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March 1, 2008 at 8:44 am
· Filed under Recipes, Soups
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Need comfort? Make this soup. Frontier Soups’ Corn Chowder mix is a great food find. |
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We’re sad now that winter is turning into spring, because we won’t have an excuse to whip up a batch of one of our favorite uber-comfort foods, the luscious corn chowder from Frontier Soups. Frontier’s entire line of dry soup mixes was a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week last year (read the review). The $6.00 bag makes about two and a half quarts of thick, chunky soup (BYO potatoes, chicken broth and heavy cream), which makes us very happy: Depending on who is in the house, we can enjoy it for two or three days. (We straddle the line of wanting to be generous and offer it to everyone, and wanting to be covetous and keep every precious drop for ourselves.) As with many of Frontier Soup’s mixes, we couldn’t find a better recipe if we tried; most of the soups taste as good cold as they do hot. We love the corn chowder plain with some fresh dill, but you can add glamour with crumbled bacon and/or grated Monterey Jack or your favorite semisoft cheese (a mound of cheese curls on the surface of the soup makes an excellent presentation). Turn the soup into a main course by adding diced chicken breast or seafood—poached salmon, haddock or cod, crabmeat, clams or oysters (or a mix). |
| If it’s already warm where you are and a thick, creamy corn and potato chowder seems too wintry, try the spring-like Potato Leek Soup and Asparagus Almond Soup. Find more of our favorite soups in the Soups & Stocks Section of THE NIBBLE online magazine. |
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February 25, 2008 at 2:18 pm
· Filed under Food Holidays, Soups
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A creamy New England clam chowder. Photo courtesy Jon Sullivan and Wikipedia. |
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We’re happy as a clam that today is National Clam Chowder Day. (Although as our colleague Philip has always asked, why is a clam so happy? It sits immobile on the ocean floor, waiting to be scooped up for someone’s dinner.) You can celebrate with New England Clam Chowder (sometimes called Boston Clam Chowder), Manhattan Clam Chowder or even Rhode Island Clam Chowder—restaurants tend to serve one or the other. New England Clam Chowder is the oldest version. According to the book 50 Chowders by Jasper White, the oldest-known printed chowder recipe is for fish chowder, printed in the Boston Evening Post on September 23, 1751. It calls for onions, pork, salt, pepper, parsley, sweet marjoram, savory, thyme and a biscuit (later replaced by oyster crackers or saltines served with the soup instead of cooked into it)—ingredients that are still used today. |
| If you wear light-colored clothing, New England may be more of your cup of soup. It’s milk- or cream-based (plus flour as a thickener), and splattering it is unlikely to permanently ruin that shirt or tie. If you want to save the calories, or cut back on cholesterol, Manhattan Clam Chowder is based on broth and tomatoes. It is actually an Italian clam soup, arriving on these shores with Italian immigrants in the late 1800s. It tends to be seasoned with oregano, from its Italian heritage. It achieved broader appeal with the name of New York Clam Chowder, which evolved to Manhattan Clam Chowder. For Rhode Island Clam Chowder, folks developed a chowder made with clear broth.
All chowders tend to be made with potatoes, onions, and of course, clams. If you have a shellfish allergy, you can opt for Fish Chowder, which substitutes shredded fish, often cod, for the clams, and throws in corn kernels for good measure. The word chowder has its roots in the Latin word calderia, which originally meant a hearth for warming things and later came to mean a cooking pot. The word evolved to cauldron, which in French became chaudiere, a heartbeat from chowder. The first chowders in our culture were fish chowders, made in cauldrons in fishing villages along the coast of France and in the Cornwall region of Southwestern England. When the fishermen came to the New World, they found clams in huge supply along the northern Atlantic coast, and clam chowder was born. Read about one of our favorite New England Clam Chowders, available by the can from Bar Harbor Foods. |
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February 4, 2008 at 5:27 pm
· Filed under Entertaining, Food Holidays, Soups, Tip Of The Day
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There’s some pretty good soup to be bought “fresh” these days. Many of the stores that sell it don’t make it themselves, but buy it in bulk from companies like Hale & Hearty, Kettle Cuisine or companies that sell only to foodservice. No matter the provenance, many of these soups taste terrific, some recipes are elegant and can save you a lot of time if you’re having a dinner party. A quart of soup can feed eight people four-ounce portions (or smaller), in demitasse cups, shooters, martini glasses, Chinese tea cups or other vessels (small bowls are good, too). The idea is to provide a small taste of something good, in a stylish presentation. We go for more courses and smaller portions, mirroring today’s “small plates” trend. But those who have dined upon our eight-course dinners know that we’ve been doing this for 20 years.
- While you’re at the store picking up the soup, buy a crunchy accompaniment—gourmet breadsticks or flatbreads, pappadums, Japanese rice crackers (the black sesame ones look great with anything, and taste great, too). Look to contrast textures in every course. |
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 Ssh..don’t tell. We bought it and heated it up. |
- Pick up a garnish for the soup—fresh herbs, edible flowers, basil oil to drop in circles with a medicine dropper, crème frâiche. Look to contrast flavors and colors in every course, too.
- If your dishes and the soup aren’t colorful enough, use bright table linens. If you don’t have them, pick up some bright, solid cocktail napkins (red, yellow, whatever color works with the soup, your dishes and tablecloth) to place under atop the service plate. (As a case in point, how much better would this cream soup in a colorless dish look, if it were presented on a richly-colored cloth, napkin or service plate? Voilá—you have an impressive course that took 10 minutes to buy and 5 minutes to plate.) |
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