New Covent Garden Soup Co Soup of the month - January

I've made no secret of my love of New Covent Garden Soup Co soups and I have a love/hate relationship with their soup of the months. If it's good, I'm gutted it will be gone in a couple of weeks time but it runs the risk of not being good enough to be a standard flavour but one they wanted to try out anyway. 

NCG (I really can't be bothered to keep writing their name out!) have a range of 'Skinny Soups' ironically most have more calories than the normal line but are all "delicious and satisfying, yet less than 2% fat, all green traffic lights and (per half carton) 2 of your 5 a day". 

This months soup is Chunky Root Vegetable,

Looks:

It was a bit on the thin side for a chunky soup before I warmed it up but it thickened nicely. It doesn't look the most appealing, a bit sickly in colour but there seemed to be plenty of veg and black turtle beans.

Taste:

For the amount of veg present, I expected my first taste to be one of the many different used. Unfortunately the first, and most, of my spoonfuls tasted heavily of black pepper. It's the very last ingredient in the ingredients list so I have to assume the machine went a bit haywire on the batch mine came from but it was massively over-seasoned. The only times I couldn't taste the black pepper was when I could taste the garlic and thyme so I really do think I ended up with a dodgy lot - either that or NCG have got their seasoning ratios way off. 

Fighting my taste buds to taste the veg, I was otherwise pleased. The vegetables do have a good fresh flavour it's just covered in pepper. The carrots especially tasted extremely vibrant and fresh and all the veg held on to a decent texture, no mushiness whatsoever. I also enjoyed the black turtle beans, mainly again for the texture as they hold a little more bite than the rest of the vegetables. 

It had thickened up while heating, but the actual soup was still on the watery side especially for a chunky soup. I'd have liked a thicker 'base' so to speak.

Rating:

6/10 It's not one of my favourites, purely because of the pepper - the vegetables were very nice and it was satisfying and extremely filling. If anybody else has tried this I'd appreciate it if you could let me know whether they're all massively peppery or if its just mine!