Text 11899, 62 rader
Skriven 2007-02-16 13:01:56 av DAVE SACERDOTE (1:123/140)
Ärende: Instant Soup Smackdown
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Lipton Cup-A-Soup vs. Nissin Cup Noodles.

Price:
Lipton Cup-A-Soup  - 4 envelopes (supposedly 4 servings) for $1.59.
Nissin Cup Noodles - 1 cup (1 serving) for 40c.
However, Cup-A-Soup makes a very skimpy serving, just 6 ounces. To
get a comparable amount of actual soup, you need to put the contents
of two envelopes into a mug and add hot water.  This makes Cup-A-Soup
cost 80c per actual serving.  Advantage: Nissin.

Noodles:
Both soups contain ramen noodles.  Cup Noodles, however, is loaded
with a dense mass of delicious tender ramen, while Cup-A-Soup 
contains a parsimonious of mostly tiny ramen fragments, some as 
small as 1/8-inch.  Lynn called them "the sweepings from a ramen 
factory."  Advantage: Nissin.

Broth:
Lipton's chicken broth is very good and chickeny in that "artificial
chicken" way that many boullions have.  Nissen's broth is thicker,
a bit oily, with (surprisingly) less umami.  Objectively, a toss-up.
Subjectively, however, Lipton's broth speaks to my childhood and
reminds me of Giggle Noodle soup served piping hot in a mug after
coming in from sledding.  Advantage: Lipton.

Extras:
Lipton's package says "Chicken Noodle with White Meat."  Every envelope
does, indeed, have a couple of tiny bits of dehydrated chicken "white"
"meat" inside, but it's only enough to make one laugh derisively and
curse Lipton for a bunch of deceptive, incestuous fellows.  Cup Noodles
makes no bones about what you get: A cup with noodles in it, though
their Chicken With Vegetables does have a sprinkling of corn kernels
and green pea fragments.  A toss-up.

Final Decision: Nissin, 2-1-1

= =

Additional tasting: Lipton Cup-A-Soup Spring Vegetable.  Same ramen
cracklins, with tiny dehydrated bits of peas and carrots. The flavor
is very strange.  Salt, onion, and a backnote of celery though there
doesn't seem to be any celery listed in the ingredients.  There is
tomato powder sufficient to color the broth pinkish (kind of).  Mostly
though, it tastes like instant miso with a dash of tomato (and the
broth separates with clumpy kind of gunk suspended in it, just like
miso, when you don't stir it for a bit.)  Overall, pretty nasty stuff.

= = 

Why am I reviewing this stuff, you may ask?  My office is right at
the entrance to the building here at work, and the foot traffic
in and out ensures that I am repeatedly blasted with huge gusts of 
arctic air.  I've had a cold this week and a bit of fever, and  
have been freezing and miserable, so I've kept a small water
boiler, some Lapsang tea bags, and lots of envelopes of Cup-A-Soup
nearby. (Until today, when I brought a Cup Noodles to enjoy and
compare.)

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Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, 
minutus carborata descendum pantorum
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