There are many things that we love about Christmas but the highlight for a lot of people is the food. Tucking into a full Christmas dinner, with your plate piled high with roast potatoes, pigs in blankets, and turkey, beef, or a nut roast is hard to beat.
But, as anyone who has been in the kitchen on Christmas Day will know, while it's a joy to eat the amount of work that goes into preparing and cooking the most hotly-anticipated meal of the year is anything but. With all that peeling, chopping, stirring, and basting nobody could blame you for feeling knackered before the day is even half done.
It's not cheap either with the price of turkey and all the trimmings rising year-on-year and food prices in general soaring by nearly 15% in the year to September in 2022. Add to that the possibility of everything going wrong in the kitchen on the big day and you're left crying out for a cheap, speedy, and no-hassle alternative to fall back on.
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Luckily there is one. It might not be as sexy as a full Christmas dinner, sure, but Heinz have crammed all the best parts into a tin for their latest soup offering. The Christmas Dinner Big Soup was launched as a limited edition last year, with only 500 cans being made and selling out within a matter of hours, but this year 20,000 tins, including a vegan version, have gone on sale at selected Asda stores across the country.
The classic version is made with turkey breast, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, sprouts, cranberry sauce, pigs in blankets, and sage and onion stuffing balls. It proved popular with soup fans across the world last year including Hollywood star Drew Barrymore who described it as "yummy" and "hearty".
The vegan version, meanwhile, features a gravy-flavoured sauce with a variety of vegetables and vegan sausage and stuffing balls with Heinz reportedly "working hard all year to perfect our recipes" and the decision to bring back the winter warmer described as a "no-brainer".
While there are thousands of tins – costing just £2 – now being sold across the country they are expected to sell out quickly and once they're gone, they're gone. Luckily for me, however, I managed to get my hands on both soups to try them out for myself. Well, if it's good enough for Drew...
Ahead of this festive experiment I wasn't exactly convinced by the merits of having the contents of a Christmas dinner crammed into a can. Sure, it's cheap and takes just a few minutes to warm up in the microwave, but I had concerns about the all-important taste element. Rather than a meal fit for a king or three I was envisioning mushy sausages, stringy veg, and a dry slab of turkey bobbing about in a bland, phlegmy gravy.
After opening the first can (the classic version) the sight that met me did little to convince me otherwise. With a rogue sprout floating at the top of the tin my meal made an unsettling plop as I poured it into a microwavable bowl and nuked it for two minutes.
It didn't look too different when it was heated up to be honest but, in fairness, there where was no way of making this meal look sexy. With an acute sense of trepidation I tucked in knowing that one of the little pigs in blankets would likely be hot enough to melt the tastebuds off my tongue.
It was piping hot all right and, to my surprise, the first spoonful was full of flavour. The sauce (or soup – I don't know what to call it at this point) was thick, wholesome, and really well-seasoned, like the kind of gravy everyone sets out to make but usually falls short of achieving.
The vegetables were soft but didn't cross the border into mushiness with the parsnips and carrots particularly sweet and tasty. Meanwhile the sausages, my partner commented, "tasted like real sausages" – whatever that is meant to mean. But they tasted good – again well-seasoned with the saltiness of the bacon also detectable among the madness of this festive stew. There wasn't too much turkey in my helping, which I wasn't really bothered about anyway, but there were plenty of the sage and onion stuffing balls which, despite their interesting texture, were the star of the show for me.
The vegan offering was similarly pleasing with the absence of meat barely noticeable and more than made up for with more of that sweet, sweet veg. I'm not a vegan myself but have enjoyed quite a few plant-based 'meat' products before, many of them disappointing. That was not the case here with the veggie sausages tasting just like the "taste like real sausages" sausages in the classic version and the stuffing balls just as moreish.
I may have been sceptical, but, as I finished my second helping, I had to admit I was a convert to the Christmas dinner in a can. Will I be serving it up on December 25? Probably not. But it definitely makes for a delicious winter warmer.
With two empty bowls I had learnt two valuable lessons from my tasting experience. One: never judge a soup by its cover. And two: always, always trust Drew Barrymore.
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