Specially Selected Creamy Carrot Bisque Gourmet Soup

Soup season is in full swing. Soup is a wonderful comfort food on a chilly day, and Aldi sells several types of ready-made soups if you don’t have time to make homemade soup. A couple of jarred soups have made their way to Aldi shelves this year, including a tomato Parmesan bisque and a creamy carrot bisque. This post deals with the carrot bisque.

Specially Selected Creamy Carrot Bisque cost $3.49 for a 24-ounce jar at the time of publication. Both this and the tomato Parmesan bisque mentioned above are products of Canada.

This is a Regular Buy, which means you should be able to find it at Aldi any time of year.

Ingredients include water, carrot puree, sugar, modified corn starch, onion puree, butter, coconut cream, salt, glucono delta-lactone, spice, whey protein concentrate, and dried roasted garlic.

If you’re watching out for allergens, this contains coconut and milk.

Specially Selected Creamy Carrot Bisque nutrition information and ingredients, part 1. (Click to enlarge.)

Specially Selected Creamy Carrot Bisque nutrition information and ingredients, part 2. (Click to enlarge.)

This soup is probably better for you than a lot of other processed foods, but it still contains a good amount of saturated fat, sodium (typical for canned or jarred soups), and some added sugars. One jar contains about three servings, and a 1-cup serving has 160 calories, 6 grams of total fat (8% DV), 4.5 grams of saturated fat (22% DV), 15 mg of cholesterol (5% DV), 990 mg of sodium (43% DV), 24 grams of total carbohydrates (9% DV), 1 gram of dietary fiber (5% DV), 14 grams of total sugars, 12 grams of added sugars (23% DV), and 1 gram of protein.

The jar instructs to simply heat and serve this soup. It’s up to you whether you heat it in the microwave or on the stove top. If you don’t use all of the jar at once, you’ll need to refrigerate the jar after opening it.

I heated this soup on my stove top. It had a distinct aroma as soon as I opened the jar, with notes that might be carrot and/or coconut, but it was difficult to determine exactly what it smells like. It’s just different.

Specially Selected Creamy Carrot Bisque ready to eat.

After ladling some heated soup into my bowl and sampling it, my first observations were that this soup is fairly sweet. It does have 12 grams of added sugars, so that sweet taste makes sense. It also has lots of tiny bits of pureed carrot. They’re extremely small, but I can see them on my spoon, and they add just a hint of texture to an otherwise smooth soup. I liked the texture. Flavor wise, this tastes sweet like a carrot, with notes of cream, coconut, butter, salt, and the faintest bit of garlic. The flavor combination is unique, and that alone makes this soup worth trying. I sprinkled a few croutons on top of my soup for a bit of crunch, but you could also serve this with traditional crackers.

The Verdict:

Specially Selected Creamy Carrot Bisque is a smooth soup featuring carrot and onion purees, butter, coconut cream, and garlic. It’s unlike any other soup we’ve had, and it’s pretty good. If you want an easy soup to heat up for lunch or a quick dinner, give this one a try.