Dr. Gourmet's Food Reviews

Tabatchnick Fine Foods: Cabbage Soup (Gluten Free)

Cabbage Soup and Vegetarian Chili

Tabatchnick is a family-owned company that's been in business since 1905. Their main focus is soups, made in small batches with natural ingredients. While some companies seem to have a rather loose definition of the word "natural," Tabatchnick is refreshing in that all of the ingredients lists I looked at are just that: recognizable, real food ingredients. They offer some gluten-free soups as well as a few with no added sodium. We'll review a couple of the no-added-sodium soups in a few weeks, but today's soups are still well under our preferred limit of ~500 milligrams of sodium per serving.

When you look at the Nutrition Facts box, you'll note that these are listed as containing 2 servings. Not to worry, however - the frozen soups have those two servings in two separate plastic pouches. Not bad for $2.59: that's about $1.30 per serving and far less than you'd pay for many other frozen meals. Just take the frozen block of soup out of the package, place in a microwaveable bowl, and microwave for about 4 minutes. We stirred the soups halfway through so that they would cook evenly.

The first variety we tasted was the Cabbage Soup. In my experience cabbage soups are usually thick, savory soups intended to make use of what ingredients were available during cold winters. This soup, however, is sweet. I mean SWEET. This is a watery, tomato-based soup with finely chopped bits of cabbage, but I'll stop there because I can't recommend it. It has 100 calories and tastes like every one of them comes from sugar. A look at the ingredients should have tipped us off: the third ingredient is sugar. Yuck.

After that dubious start we turned to their Vegetarian Chili. This certainly redeems the other! A fine, thick chili with lots of big kidney beans along with diced onion and tomatoes. It's pretty mild with just a hint of cayenne to go with the savory flavors of chili and oregano. This would make a great winter meal with a piece of crusty bread and a side salad. The numbers are good, too: 200 calories, 470 milligrams of sodium, and a whopping 8 grams of fiber. Definitely recommended - and gluten-free!