After what seems like forever I finally made "The Soup."
and… it's terrible.
Type The Soup into the search bar here. You will find countless people raving over it.
"Oh my god I just made 'The Soup' and it was better than expected!!"
Dude, have you ever had soup? There are several varieties of Campbell's Chunky Soup that absolutely blow this out of the water. If you went to a nice sit down restaurant you would have a stroke.
At first I thought, oh it's just a bunch of broke college kids who have never been out to a restaurant before just throwing stuff into a crock pot. No. No way. This was expensive. Cost me at least $50 for the ingredients.
It's super watery. The broth/sauce is trying to be a broth and sauce at the same time and it achieves neither. One time my step-grandmother made us spaghetti using tomato soup as the sauce and this kind of reminds me of that. Keep in mind I used double the spinach and 1 1/2 times the chicken.
There is little to no flavor. This dish needs so much more. I ended up tripling the salt and pepper. Added oregano and some smoked paprika. After several taste tests it's just bland. I basically ended up just scooping a few tortellini out and eating those. The sauce/broth is just gross and it totally dominates the dish.
I went with the recipe on the sidebar under "Useful Threads." I followed the instructions and microwaved the onion mixture. You can taste that microwave taste clearly. It leaves this terrible aftertaste in your mouth. Have you ever reheated a McDonald's cheeseburger? That's what you are going to be feeling here.
Enough of my rambling. For those of you that tried and liked this soup: Why?
There's no way that adding sausage instead of chicken is going to fix this mess so don't give me that.
Sorry if I sound like an asshole but I am going to end up throwing away $45 worth of food because I made this subs all time favorite dish and I am pissed.
by blff266697
30 Comments
Agreed. I didn’t like it at all. I ended up picking out all the tortellini, and dumping a ton of fresh parmesan on it, just to help get rid of the “soup” taste, and ate that. Threw out the big expensive waste that was sitting in the pot. We got our stuff from Aldi, and it still wasn’t all that cheap for a soup.
Yeah it’s fucking gross
I’ve had “the soup” and thought it wasn’t very good. Not only that but I’ve also remade it using a Dutch oven on a stove top just standard without a slow cooker using regular techniques for how I’d make a soup and it was much better. But still not great or something I’d make in general.
I’ve seen the argument of “well it’s just a base you’re supposed to add xyz and make it your own”. (There’s probably 5 people type this rebuttal out as I type)But at that point you may as well just make a dish that doesn’t suck.
An alternative recipe utilizing similar ingredients that isn’t borderline disgusting imo is just tortellini, chicken, and spinach in a homemade vodka sauce with some Parmesan on top. Served as a pasta dish. Tastes lovely but simple. And doesn’t take much more effort to cook.
Flavorless watery waste of money. I hoped it would improve the next day. It was possibly even worse. I threw it out.
I like it. However, I also diverge from the recipe in a few ways. I used a four cheese tortellini, I don’t microwave anything, I use more cream/less broth, and I add a lot of cajun seasoning. The result is much more flavourful and a much thicker sauce. I’ve heard no complaints from the people I’ve made it for either.
It’s fine, but a) if you spent $45 you must live in an expensive area or don’t know what a “store brand” is, and b) there’s lots of ways to improve it. Start by sautéing the onions and garlic and all that instead of microwaving, replace the chicken with Italian sausage which will add some flavor, and add seasonings which you figured out but you can always do more.
It’s a recipe base to expand on, but people who aren’t very experienced with cooking can make it too. It’s not great, but it’s easy.
I agree, I was super disappointed by it and ended up dumping about half of it when I just couldn’t any more.
Did you follow the recipe to a T? If so I think that’s your issue. I never follow recipes to a T if I get them from the internet. I’ll adjust measurements, add a few ingredients, and season and taste as I go so there’s no “fuck this is bland” moment at the end.
There is a reason it used to be called “Upvote Soup”, karma farming at its finest. Not that reddit karma means anything and the recipe is terrible at best, but hey. Welcome to social media.
I made it, and me and my partner thought it was really tasty. Maybe we used a different recipe 🤷
I’ve been meaning to make it again actually.
It was a golden age when celebrity gossip was mostly on TV and not online. And Joel McHale is a charming and funny host.
Dozens of us…
They’re just in denial because those posts gave them Reddit karma. Classic Reddit circlejerking. I followed the recipe exactly, it’s just a bad recipe.
I made it and no one in my house liked it. When I came to Reddit to say so, I got downvoted.
Yes. Agreed. It was a flavorless fat bomb.
I didn’t have to make it to know it would come out awful. I don’t know how this or the crack chicken got so much hype.
It’s kind of like cooking for people who have never cooked before or don’t know how to cook. It would be pretty fancy if you made it on a hot plate in your dorm room, but it’s actually kinda garbage.
I made it years ago, using Italian Sausage instead of chicken, sautéed aromatics, etc. and was not a fan of it. Thankfully, I did this before the recent-is spike in grocery prices. I’m glad, I guess, for the people who have made it and enjoyed it. Overly mooshy tortellini isn’t my jam.
I’ve riffed on my own doing my own variation of a Budget Bytes recipe, Creamy pesto chicken with tomatoes recipe. Or something like that. On the stovetop. It is a great way to use up cherry tomatoes on the verge of going bad, or at least no longer firm enough to use in a salad. Instead of sautéing them in the pan, I split them in half and oven roast them in some olive oil and s&p while I prep other ingredients. Could be a soup, I suppose, if I added more broth. Have done it with both pasta and tortellini. I just kind of wing it and it is always good.
Agreed with you. It just wasn’t great.
We also hated the heavily hyped Mississippi Pot Roast. The ranch taste and smell were so overwhelming that we couldn’t eat it.
Unlike Mississippi pot roast, which was as good as advertised.
I never made soup in the crock pot. But made lots of other yummy things.
The soup is great!
The trick is cook the chicken thighs first in a frying pan. Then to saute the onions and garlic in the fat with extra butter/oil. Add the flour and olive oil to make a roux. Add the tomato paste and saute a bit more. deglaze with the broth and tomatoes (half of both for a pasta dish, keep all if you want “soup”, can’t remember). Add the chicken back and your spinach. Boil your pasta to directions while simmering for 5 minutes. Drain the pasta and add the cream, any fresh herbs and cheese to your sauce. pour sauce over pasta.
Then put the slow cooker back in the cupboard, because you’ve done the above in 30 minutes and it tastes WAY BETTER.
My family loved it – my husband made it, and he tends to season the way he sees fit. Maybe that’s what changed it. But it was delicious.
SN: I didn’t know it was ‘a thing’, just that my husband was excited to make it. And me and my daughter were delighted with the result.
How did this cost you $45???! Either way this one’s on you. You didn’t think to try the dish and spice it to your expectations? That’s what anyone with any sort of cooking skill does to a recipe.
With the same ingredients, minus the tortellini and broth, you can make Tuscan Chicken and it’s 100x better.
Anytime I’ve made it, it’s been a hit and it hasn’t been watery. Albeit I don’t really use measurements so maybe I’ve actually been using the wrong amounts and it should have been watery. There’s a comment here about a Cajun seasoning version I think I wanna try
If you just discredit the recipe straight out like this post suggests, people won’t try it at all. That’s a mistake. The recipe I adapted from The Soup is excellent, and I would never have come to it without the reddit posts. As a start, make it on the stove and don’t microwave anything.
I don’t know. I brought The Soup to a chili/soup cookoff at work and won it, so there’s that.
It’s just not something you should make in a slow cooker