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Quick, try to think of a scenario where there is a Keurig machine and no microwave.  Pretty hard to come up with this scenario, right? Well unless you’re visiting your local bank branch or waiting at the service department at the car dealership, the brand new Campbell’s Fresh Brewed K Cup soup is trying to solve a problem that simply doesn’t exist.  Despite the crazed idiocy this soup entails, it’s our responsibility to give it a try.  

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The Ingredients:

  • Coffee Mug
  • Keurig Machine
  • Campbell’s Noodle/Vegetable Mix
  • Campbell’s Seasoned Chicken Broth K Cup

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First Impressions:

Years ago, Campbell’s invented a microwaveable container for their soup, which made soup easier than ever.  You peeled off the metal cover and refastened the microwave safe topper, popped it in the microwave for a couple of minutes and you had full blown soup with no compromises.  Let’s take a look at how the Keurig Hot variety compares.

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K Cup Campbell’s soup comes in two varieties currently, Standard Chicken Noodle and Southwest Chicken, and cost around $9 for a 6 pack. To initiate the soup process, you must first tune up the Keurig machine and wait for a minute or so while it heats up and is ready to go.  Second, open up the noodle and vegetable packet and empty it into your coffee mug of choice that you like to eat soup out of, if that exists.  After the machine is heated up, you place mug on the Keurig drip tray, load the K Cup filled with broth concentrate into the machine, close it, and press the middle sized 8 oz button.

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Next comes the magic where your soup is brewed.  After the initial 5 seconds of broth spewing out, it appears that straight hot water is poured out for the majority of the time. After the liquid is finished spewing out, you’re supposed to stir the mixture and let it sit for 2-3 minutes as it…brews….

The process feels more like a Ramen creation than traditional Campbell’s soup, yet even more idiot proof due to no timer or the extreme intellect needed to operate a modern microwave.  After letting the soup cool, I took my first spoonful and was extremely underwhelmed.  The noodles tasted half developed, hard yet mealy in spots. Pretty much the worse, stale tasting soup noodle I’ve ever encountered. The freeze dried corn was most likely the shining element, but it was hard to overlook that the noodle consistency was putrid.  While the broth was tasty as it could be and this process did in fact create soup, it’s hard to look past the fact that K Cup soup was still way worse than the easier (and better) microwave alternatives.

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Campbell’s Fresh Brewed Southwest Style Chicken Keurig Hot Soup – The Verdict

Other than if you face the rare situation where you have a $100 coffee maker and not a $30 microwave, there’s no reason to even think about these as soup source.  Despite following the rules to the T, the noodles came out more questionable than your starting fantasy roster.  Eating this soup with a spoon should be made illegal, as it was much easier to sip it like a beverage, which feels rather odd.  Other than the one time novelty, just stick with the microwaveable single serving soups.  Instead of throwing away the microwave safe container provided by Campbell’s you now have a mug that needs to be cleaned.

 

Campbell's Fresh Brewed Soup Keurig Hot [Review]
Somewhat fun to makeSippable
Inconvenient Crusty noodlesWay better options for making soup
3.9Overall Score
Taste4.2
Value4.4
Quality3.1
Reader Rating 6 Votes
2.7