One of my usual food shopping days, when looking for ‘something different’ to eat I walked up and down the aisles looking for something to just come out of the shelves and hit me You know those days I am sure. Well this particular day I was checking out the frozen foods departments and happened to bump into another woman shopper as she was heading towards the kosher foods – soups in particular. She told me that the Tabatchnick soups were on sale today, and advised me to stock up on them. So I walked over to see what she was talking about and noticed that yes, they were on sale, and yes, they had my favorite soup of all time-Tabatchnick Cabbage Soup. It brought back some great memories of the days that I used to stand in a hot kitchen and cook up a batch myself. I bought box to try it out and give it a Product Review.
I grabbed a box of the cabbage soup, and looked it over. The front of the box had a beautiful picture of a bowl of Tabatchnick Cabbage soup and I could almost smell the aroma of cabbage being cooked in a big pot. I looked further and right on top it said 90 calories – well that’s certainly a plus, and then I noticed the Kosher Seal. Looking further down on the front of the Tabatchnick Cabbage Soup box I noticed it came in two microwavable cooking pouches. To be honest with you this soup was looking better and better to me the more I read the product box.
Then, still having the idea of giving this soup a review, I turned over the box and read the nutrition facts and realized that it each pouch was 90 calories and that the cabbage soup came in two pouches. Total fat was only 1g, cholesterol 0mg, sodium 160mg and high in potassium at 240mg. Along with the vitamins it contains this was really a very healthy cabbage soup to eat and I figured, to review..
Since the soups were on sale, at a price of $1.55 a box, I took 2 boxes, one to eat now and one to freeze. I finished my shopping for the day, paid the cashier, and went home with my mouth watering for a taste of this memorable cabbage soup that I enjoyed when my mother cooked it, and anxious to write the review.
I took out a microwave bowl as instructed on the Tabatchnick cabbage soup box, and ripped open the box of the cabbage soup. I then took out one pouch, left the second pouch in the box and put it into the freezer. The pouch was completely encased in plastic without anything to pull or drag to open. I reviewed the box further and realized that they wanted me to take a knife and slash an X on the plastic. Then, they further instructed, I was to put into a microwavable pot to boil-in-the-bag- for 4-5 minutes. It dawned on me that once the slashed X opened–the cabbage soup should quickly pour out. I got the idea that if I put the plastic wrapped soup X side faced down into a large bowl, the soup should then seep out once it was no longer frozen. This way, I rationalized, the soup would not need any help in pouring into the bowl and all I had to do was remove and discard the plastic, get a spoon and eat it.
My system sounded good on paper but was easier said than done. After the cabbage soup finished cooking, I had to help the X scored spot open (with my fingers, a fork or/and a spoon) to get the soup to pour into the bowl. My fingers burned from touching the hot plastic as well as the hot soup since the cabbage soup did not easily pour out. I literally had to scape it off the plastic and into the soup bowl. It was a mess. When I finally did get to eat the soup, it was cold and had to be reheated. I knew that my review of this Tabatchnick soup would not be the greatest even though the cabbage soup itself really tasted delicious when I finally did get to eat it.
However, in all honesty, I prefer my soup from of a can. It is so much easier and cleaner to open a can, turn it over and have the soup pour out into a plastic container. The Tabatchnick frozen pouches were a good way to store two pouches in one box but not easy to remove the soup from the plastic pouches, and I burned my fingers a few times trying to scrape the cabbage soup from inside the pouch. Also, if I wanted to have another cup of the Tabatchnick Cabbage Soup, I would have to go through the entire scratching an X process again. No frozen soup is that delicious to make me work so hard to eat.
Tabatchnick have other varieties of soups, and I tried most and must say that while they were pretty good, I stopped buying them. I do not keep Kosher, so there is no religious reason for me to buy them. None of their variety of soups were that memorable that I feel that I ‘must” have them and so I will stick to the canned soups, or make my own. On a score from 1-10 I give them a 5 for taste.
