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?
Canned soup is cooked in the can in most cases so anything that may have evaporated away changing the taste is still sealed in the can. Also, when mass producing anything most companies will choose cheaper ingredients over higher quality ingredients.
So you’re left with a soup with low grade ingredients that’s still in the pot it was cooked in and never stirred, it’ll keep you alive but it didn’t have the same amount of effort put into it as someone cooking their own.And there are OK canned soups out there. I wouldn’t call them all “so bad.” The broth of Campbell’s condensed chicken noodle soup is quite tasty. A few of their smaller, more premium if you will cans (I forget the name of the line of soups) are pretty good. As well, I’ve found a few Progreso cans I like. They’re never going to be as good as homemade. I like your reasons for why they aren’t as good. That’s good stuff.
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.
The can is used to preserve it and prevent the processes that would otherwise make it better.
Canned soup - which is a bunch of ingredients sealed in a tin then heated to cook and pasteurise it - is never going to taste as good as fresh ingredients that only need to stay edible for a few days, not a few years.
The issue of keeping it shelf stable also has an impact on taste.
I always felt like it tastes like the metal of the can which is not a taste I like in my food
They coat the cans in a plastic lining. And most metals, including steel, have no flavor anyway. “metal” smell is from oils reacting together. https://youtu.be/BqLH-nTZEOc
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I don’t think that soup does improve as leftovers.
If you do like old soup, though, there’s probably bacteria growing in it, and as others point out, that won’t be happening with caned soup.
They choose to use not only Cheap ingredients, but also a whole bunch of chemicals, many of them sweeteners (and add even MORE salt to hide the sweetness) and stabilizers. It’s not really rare commendable for human consumption if you ask me…
