Being a man with a rather healthy appetite, I wouldn't normally consider making soup as an evening meal. I need carbs, calories and dollop of saturated fat. Flavoured water doesn't cut it. But, Lolz had a cold and it was a pretty grim night, and to be honest, this looked like it had a bit more about it than your average can of Baxter's... "souped up" you could say... so I thought I'd give it a go.
It's an interesting concept - the soup itself seems pretty standard, albeit with tons of veg, pasta AND rice - with a plate of chicken and salsa on the side. One of my curiosities (not criticisms) about 15 minute meals is how some of the meals are supposed to be eaten. Take this soup for example - you spoon the soup into a bowl and then do you eat the chicken on the side or mix it together? If you mix it together, why not just put the chicken straight into the soup pan from the frying pan, and save on washing up? Don't even get me started on the saucy pasta/ salad dishes.
Anyway, the soup is basically just chicken stock which you boil whilst adding more interesting ingredients over the course of 15 minutes. You could say the end result is a rather chunky minestrone soup but I feel this is understating it slightly - what you really end up with is a huge pile of veg with a little bit of broth. The chicken on the side satisfies my meat cravings, but I do feel it would have been better chopped up and served in the soup. The salsa obviously ends up getting diluted in the broth once it is mixed together.
Overall though it is fantastic - easily the best soup yet. I guess I like a good chunky soup and there is quite an array of colours and flavours here, all of which go well together. The warming broth goes down well on a cold November evening. And as a bonus, it's fantastic heated up the next day - the broth has pretty much all gone, so you just get a pile of chicken stock infused veg - yum.
Lolz gave the dish 9/10. Difficulty rating 2/10 - I had to slice the veg by hand as my processor doesn't feature a thick slicer!
I ended up making wraps out of the chicken & left over salsa the next day. Brilliant!
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