Why is canned soup often so bad even though soup tends to improve as leftovers?
Why is canned soup often so bad even though soup tends to improve as leftovers?
and even when using cheap ingredients at home it's still miles better
surely they've figured out a way to can / pasturize it that doesn't fuck it up?
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There was an interesting CBC podcast called Fridge Light, and in one episode the host followed people who had their recipes accepted for commercial sale. Apparently, a big issue is making those recipes generic enough so that they are acceptable to the widest range of consumers. This often means toning down the flavors. So for example, a spicy recipe gets dialed back to the point that even people who find yogurt offensively spicy can eat it. Basically, they bland everything down. There's other factors as well, like the taste from the can, etc.
Cans are coated in plastic these days, the food doesn't come. in contact with the metal. But the rest of this is accurate. Add to that recipes are changed to work at very large scale and to be the most efficient, not extract the most flavor out of the ingredients.
Something about the commercial canning process does give a distinctive taste though. I do meal prep for a person who receives food bank food and he gets these big cans of plain chicken. They smell exactly like canned tuna. For the life of me I can not figure out how they get that way.
I've got a friend who does all his own home preserving with a pressure canner (in glass jars) and he cans chicken the same way a commercial place would- raw chicken cooked during the canning process. His taste and smell like delightful chicken soup.
I bought a can of hummus made in Jordan one time. It also smelled like tuna - one of the most god-awful things I’ve ever experienced.
You're right, there's definitely a "canned-food" taste that turns me off most canned soups. For some reason I don't notice with canned tomato soup, but every other canned soup I've tried has this weird flavor to it that I can't put my finger on
To add to this, I could see this being furthered by most people eating soup when they are sick or feeling sick. So blandness might be a good thing on an upset stomach.