Founded in 1986 to provide quality frozen soups to restaurants, Kettle Cuisine expanded in 1999 to supermarkets, finally making their products readily available to consumers for home preparation in the mid-2000s. The company prides itself in using locally-sourced, naturally grown or produced ingredients, free of hormones and antibiotics. They also regularly send out samples of their soups for testing, adjusting their nutritional information on the packaging as needed so consumers will know exactly what they’re getting. There definitely seems to be a commitment to providing top-notch, healthy food for busy lifestyles.
Available for review were three of the company’s ten organic, gluten-free soups: Angus Beef Steak Chili with Beans, New England Clam Chowder and Tomato Soup with Garden Vegetables. Each individual serving is 10 oz (283 g) and the calories range from a low of 110 (Tomato Soup) to 310 (Clam Chowder). The sodium content of each is relatively low for pre-packaged soup, topping out at 710 for the Tomato Soup. The Chili and Tomato Soup are low fat, but the creamy Chowder racks up 17 grams of fat, though all three are free of trans fats. And the ingredient lists don’t require a dictionary to read; the ingredients are straight-forward and recognizable: veggies, meat, milk products, etc. Nary a preservative in sight!
And the taste? How does it hold up to all that wholesome goodness? Very well indeed. The chili is rich and hearty, with tasty, chewy chunks of beef (solid pieces, no ground beef here). It’s very flavorful, but not overly spicy, an excellent choice for a cold winter’s day. The clam chowder has a rich creamy taste and a bountiful amount of clams which have a pleasant, non-chewy texture. And the tomato soup, bursting with vegetables (zucchini, squash, carrots), makes a good light snack that’s full of flavor. The company Web site recommends using the soup as a sauce for other dishes, and it would work very well for that indeed.
Despite being frozen and microwaved, each of these soups genuinely does taste as if you chopped up the ingredients yourself and worked over a hot stove to bring it all together – no small feat for pre-packaged food at a reasonable price. Bravo to Kettle Cuisine for proving that healthy doesn’t mean suffering through bland, tasteless food that leaves your wallet empty. Highly recommended!
Kettle Cuisine can be found online here, where they provide nutritional information, ingredient listings, serving and preparation suggestions and even suggestions for alternate uses for the empty soup bowls!
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