Top 8: Chicken soup put to the test to find the best autumn warmers
We The Chicken Content On Flavour Soup And Best Chicken Good With Focused
The season of colds and chest infections is fast approaching. A sympathetic smile goes a long way, as does something warming from the kitchen. Keeping hydrated is important, and hot water with a slice of lemon and fresh ginger will help to speed recovery. Add fresh turmeric, black pepper, and a sliver of fresh chilli for further nourishment.
We can boil a chicken carcass covered in water for 30 minutes for a cure-all. It can be drunk by the cup as is or further flavoured with onions, garlic, carrots, and celery. It is amazingly restorative, and you will find plenty of hidden pieces of meat that come off the bone. It can be cooled and poured into freezer trays for later use — very handy for a potato or mushroom soup thickened with a handful of breadcrumbs.
There is chicken broth for sale in the Chicken Inn, English market Cork (€3/500ml), Sadie’s Kitchen chicken bone broth (€4.50/€3.5ml) and Baxters do a canned broth (€2.20/400g) in supermarkets.
For today’s survey, we focused on chicken soup with the best chicken content and good flavour delivering the most protein to sustain us and the least amount of salt, which should be avoided when we are under the weather.
In a base of 22% tomatoes, a decent 6% shredded chicken is blended with 6% coconut milk, spinach, onions, celery, carrots, coriander. Nicely plump vegetables — it comes with celery, carrots, onions which are full flavoured and medium hot spicing from garlic and ginger purées, chillies, lime juice, cumin. Salt at 0.54% is fine, protein is average at 2.4%. The net result was lively, tasty chicken flavours with added warming spices. Tops for all tasters.
9
With 4.5% white wine there is added richness to 4% chicken delivering a low 1.2% protein. Salt is a fair 0.6%. A can of water is added to dilute, or half water and milk which will add more protein. Lemon juice, garlic and onion powders add interest. The flavour enhancer is monosodium glutamate. All tasters liked this one.
8.25
A decent 8% chicken along with chicken stock delivers good chicken flavour. There are also carrots, leeks, and celery, deepened in flavour by tomato paste. There was good weight to all of it and it could make a meal. Tasters enjoyed it. Good price.
8.5
Chunky with plenty of vegetables, this lacked a full chicken flavour, despite a relatively decent 4.5% chicken. There are 14% carrots, 10% potato, 6.5% turnip, 4.5% celery, red lentils, onion and peas 2.5% each with cream, buttermilk delivering 2.37% protein and salt not too high at 0.91%. Chicken bouillon has monosodium glutamate. Tasters enjoyed the clean vegetable tastes. Gluten free, made in Co Meath from local produce.
8
In this canned soup a relatively decent 5% chicken delivers 2.2% protein, and 0.63% salt is not a worry. Chicken stock is thickened with cornflour and enriched with cream, onion, sage and yeast extract. White pepper was noticed by our eight-year old-taster who liked its heat. The chicken flavour was low and while there were no pieces to get our teeth into, it was liked by tasters.
7.5
Gluten free, this has a moderate 4% chicken with fresh flavoured 19% carrots, 11% potato, 8% onion, leek 4%, 2.5% celery, with chicken and vegetable stock enriching the flavour. Protein at 1.9% is low enough and salt at 0.80% is acceptable. It amounts to clean tastes of each ingredient, blended with cream for a product that tasters liked.
8
Protein here is 3% from a decent 8% chicken, which it’s comforting to know is Irish. (We came across one inexpensive soup made with chicken from Brazil which did not make our Top 8). This one is naturally thickened with cream and butter and so is gluten-free. Salt is a commendably low 0.55%, but a little salt added at home may be needed to bring out the chicken flavour.
8
This canned soup has 3% chicken 3%, cream modified cornflour and wheatflour, which gives a less naturally thickened, gloopy texture. Protein is a low 1.6%, salt is low too at 0.6%. Onion and spice extracts lifted this above many other samples to make our Top 8. Tasters thought they would use it to add leftover chicken and serve with pasta or rice.
7