Product review: Glorious soups

I mostly work from home, and usually fix my own lunch. My staples: soups, salads, and beans on toast. Followed by a proper dinner.

So I was proper delighted when a big giant box of soups and pasta sauces were couriered to me from GLORIOUS! soups; there was enough here to feed me for two weeks.

The soups come in big, bold, international flavours. Instead of the bog-standard, oftentimes gloopy Chicken and Veg soup, GLORIOUS offers Tuscan chicken and Orzo. Out with Carrot and Coriander, in with Thai Carrot and Lemongrass, which was a little too sweet for my liking. There’s no tomato soup, but there are Goan Tomato and Lentil and Spanish Tomato and Chorizo flavours.

Other flavours include Vietnamese Hot and Sour and New England Butternut squash. Almost all of these soups are really special, especially the Vietnamese soup and the Spanish Tomato and Chorizo. You’d be tremendously impressed to get them in a top restaurant.

There’s also a Sunny Thai Chicken, marketed as a meal soup; it’s basically a Thai chicken curry which is substantial enough to eat as a meal. I wasn’t crazy about this one. The curry is grand but nothing special, and this product can’t quite decide if it’s a thick soup or a thin curry, or whether it should be eaten with a fork or spoon.

Three pasta sauces – Big Easy Chilli Cream Sauce, Diablo Sundried Tomato and Chilli, and the New York Alfredo – complete the range. The tomato and chilli sauce, in particular, is better than most other pasta sauces you’ll find on the shelves.

Barring the Thai flavours, I was very impressed with the range. As well as being delicious, it’s great value, with a 600g container of restaurant quality soup retailing at €2.59 (only available in Dunnes). By comparison, a 600g carton of the vastly inferior Avonmore soup will set you back €2.99 in Tesco.