by Bottom Line: The Spicy Nashville-Style Hot Chicken Soup from Campbell’s is quite tasty and brings some heat, but it is nothing like the sandwich it is named after.
Soup season is here with the weather getting cooler, and Campbell’s has added another selection to its Spicy Soup line just in time. That one is supposed to remind you of a Nashville Hot Chicken Sandwich and here is the description from the website:
With mouth-watering, big flavors with Southern heat and bold ingredients, this spicy soup is capable of fueling even the heartiest appetite. Seasoned with delicious spices and cayenne pepper sauce, this ready-to-eat soup is bursting with sizzling flavor from chicken meat with no antibiotics, red peppers, potatoes, and onions.
The chicken pieces are the standard, industrial cubes you get in a canned soup. The potatoes manage to hold some texture, and those are rather plentiful (but I have no idea how they are supposed to relate to a Nashville Hot sandwich). The broth seems like what you would get from a cheese soup, but that flavor comes from butter, not cheese. There are pieces of red peppers and onions in there, and they add some flavor but very little texture. A peppery seasoning is noticeable and delivers some kick (and is that cumin I taste in the background?), but it in no way replicates the Nashville Hot experience. Still, the soup is tasty for the canned variety, quite hearty, and would work well on a cold day.
The heat is approaching Medium on my scale, which is pretty good for something from a major soup producer. If you were to throw in some chunks of avocado, shredded cheese, and tortilla chips or strips, you would have a good cheesy tortilla soup. So maybe they need to consider re-labeling it and selling it that way?
They show this at 180 calories for a one-cup portion, but a full can is 400 calories, so who gets that leftover partial portion of 40 calories? Somebody going hungry, I guess. All I know is that I ate the full 2.1 portions from the can and it was rather filling. If you add that cheese, avocado, and tortillas as I recommend above, it will amp of the calories, but you will probably still be around 600 which isn’t too bad. Just don’t let your doctor know about the sodium content (1720mg for the full can) otherwise you might find yourself on a low-salt diet.
This sells for two to three bucks a can in my area depending on what sale they may have going on. I don’t see any indication that it is limited time only, so I imagine it will stick around as long as sales are good. This is a nice additions to the other spicy soups on the shelves, and I will certainly be buying it again.
Nutrition Info:
Ingredients: Chicken Stock, Potatoes, White Chicken Meat, Tomato Puree (Water, Tomato Paste), Red Peppers, Onions, Vegetable Oil, Modified Cornstarch, Contains Less Than 2% Of: Water, Cayenne Pepper Sauce (Cayenne Peppers, Vinegar, Salt, Garlic), Butter (Cream, Salt), Wheat Flour, Salt, Chicken Fat, Yeast Extract, Soy Protein Concentrate, Paprika For Color, Brown Sugar (Sugar, Invert Sugar, Molasses), Flavoring, Dried Garlic, Dried Onions, Spices, Red Pepper, Sodium Phosphate, Vegetable Broth, Cooked Chicken Skins, Dillweed, Beta Carotene For Color, Disodium Inosinate, Disodium Guanylate, Natural Smoke Flavoring, Dried Chicken, Chicken Broth, Egg Yolks. Contains: Egg, Wheat, Milk, Soy
Serving Size: 1 Cup
Calories: 180
Fat: 11g (3g Sat/0 Trans)
Protein: 6g
Carbs: 15g
Sodium: 790mg
