Cauliflower-ness

Cauliflower just loves to be soup. It cannot get enough. If you were to blend cooked cauliflower on its own, you would basically have soup. Sainsbury’s have kindly added other things to this, as that would be pretty boring. As it stands, this soup is very cauliflower heavy and also features a lot of pepper, some nutmeg, as well as some much needed garlic, which helps a great deal.

Cheesiness

I think you can detect some cheese in here, but it definitely takes a backseat. It’s as if Clive (Clive works at the soup factory) forgot to add the cheese until very late in the process and just lobbed a Babybel in at the last second.

Cauliflower-cheesiness

If I were to close my eyes and picture eating cauliflower cheese, it does sort of capture that taste despite the different texture. I think you’d be annoyed that Clive (Clive is your husband in this scenario) didn’t grate enough cheddar on it before putting it in the oven and that it’s a bit watery.

Pepperiness

The quantity of pepper already in this soup is quite high, which I really like. I tend to put black pepper in soup almost automatically (for review purposes, I always try without first), so was pleasantly surprised to taste plenty already on board. This may be divisive to some who could be at risk of finding this soup bitter. My peers on the Sainsbury’s dot com website reviewing the soup have sadly fallen foul of this. They may be in fact tasting more of the nutmeg that Sainsbury’s touts as being a feature of the soup as this can be a little bitter. My heart goes out to them.

Christmas-ness?

Something that did puzzle me, was the need to theme the tin in a Christmas style. Presumably this is a limited edition soup that will expire as soon as the clock strikes midnight on the 25th. Personally (and professionally), I consider cauliflower cheese to be an all year round affair and the feature of many a Sunday roast or weekday not-roast.

Conclusion

I think this is pretty good, if not an exact replica of cauliflower cheese. The bitterness-level may divide opinion (we don’t shy away from controversy at TSR – editor), but I will be sad to see this leave the shelves when Christmas has been and gone.