Product Review: Cheesy Bacon Potato Soup

As the weather grows colder I find that I crave soup more and more, but oftentimes don't want to spend the time to actually make the soup from scratch. Sure, I could buy the canned soup but I don't like a lot of canned soup. However, PA Dutch General Store (or Food & Candy/ Tea & Spice if you're in downtown Fredricksburg, VA) has a variety of delicious soup mixes that give you that not-from-can taste without all the work. Recently we got their Cheesy Bacon Potato Soup mix. The directions to make this is very simple:

Mix 3/4 cup of soup mix with 2.5 cups of milk or water. Bring to a boil and cook for 10 minutes. Reduce to a simmer and cook for 10-15 minutes to let the vegetable chunks re-hydrate.

VERY simple! We've tried the soup mix with three different liquids so far: milk, chicken broth, and water. We found that the milk made the soup too thick and didn't hydrate the vegetables well at all. They were still tough and chewy. The milk made the soup more like a sauce you would put on something like broccoli- which I'm sure would be delicious. We've also used chicken broth to make the soup. I found this one to be really good. The thickness of the soup was perfect, it gave the soup extra flavor, and hydrated the vegetables perfectly. HOWEVER, if you want to do it this way I highly recommend trying to find some low-sodium chicken broth otherwise the soup is super salty. Water was also a good option, it didn't give the extra flavor the chicken broth did but it gave the soup the right thickness and the vegetables the right hydration without adding the salt.

I really enjoyed this soup and highly recommend it if you want freshly made soup but don't want to spend hours working on it!