We’re currently in the throes of soup season—but it’s always soup season at Sporked HQ, where we’re constantly taste testing brothy soups, creamy soups, chilis, and chowders. This year, we finally got around to tasting broccoli cheese soup and French onion soup, and we found a couple of real bangers amongst the mediocre slop. Hot tip: If you’re looking for the best soup, don’t forget to look in the refrigerated and frozen sections.
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If you’re like us, you blithely assumed that Panera at Home makes the best broccoli cheese soup. While Panera’s broccoli cheese soup is extremely delicious (it came in at #2 on list), it couldn’t quite hang with Signature Cafe Broccoli Cheddar Soup. Like Panera’s line of grocery store soups, this stuff comes in a microwavable plastic tub in a cooler near the deli. Heat it up and it’s a revelation—it’s rich and creamy, and has the perfect blend of seasonings. It’s gluten free to boot. If you shop at an Albertsons-owned grocery store give it a shot.
There sure is a lot of bad French onion soup at the grocery store. We taste tested powdered mixes and canned onion soups alike, and most of them were bad. Not just mediocre, but genuinely gross, with very few exceptions. But then we found it, nestled in the frozen section at our local Trader Joe’s: Cuisine Adventures French Onion Soup. A box comes with two frozen cylinders of soup; you simply pop one in an oven safe crock, heat it in the oven, and, voila, French onion soup complete with crouton and melty gruyere cheese on top. The soup itself is fantastic. It has so much rich flavor you’d swear it was made with beef broth or stock, but it’s actually vegetarian. The best soup is surprising, and this stuff definitely is.
Howdy! I’m Gwynedd, Sporked’s managing editor. I live in Los Angeles and have access to the best tacos the U.S. has to offer—but I’m a sucker for a crunchy Old El Paso taco night every now and then. I’ve been at Sporked since 2022 and I’m still searching frozen mozzarella sticks that can hold a candle to restaurant sticks.
Why you should trust me: I’ve been a journalist for 20 years (yikes), a consumer of food for 40-plus years, and I’m truly hard pressed to think of foods I don’t like (or that I can’t tolerate at the very least). Oh and one time I cooked my way through Guy Fieri’s cookbook and wrote about the journey through Flavortown.
What I buy every week: Trader Joe’s Original Savory Thins. Fat free plain yogurt (usually Fage or Nancy’s). Honeycrisp apples. Sweet cream coffee creamer for my at-home Americanos. A frozen cauliflower crust pizza and some jarred mushrooms to top it with. Old El Paso Stand ‘N Stuff taco shells and Gardein Ground Be’f, even though I think “be’f” is a nightmarish contraction.
Favorite ranking: Stouffer’s frozen dinners. I don’t own a microwave (I get my cancers the old fashioned way!), so I love taste testing things that I don’t really buy to eat at home.
Least favorite ranking: Soy sauce. Don’t get me wrong, I love soy sauce—but consuming that much sodium in one sitting is probably illegal in some countries. Our frozen enchilada taste test was a close second; the smell of microwaved corn tortillas still haunts me.
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!
Gwynedd Stuart
Luke Field
Vinz Karl
Jessica Block
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!