Product Review: Giada De Laurentiis' Classic Minestrone Soup Starter Mix

Has the weather changed where you are?

Here in Southern California the weather is up and down.  Today it is down and raining, and they say we'll have ran for a few days.  Boy, do we need the rain, so it's welcome.

When the weather changes I like to make some simple dishes for packed lunches to take to work.  Soup is one of my favorite midday meals.  

So, the other day I was walking around Target and found this soup starter from Giada De Laurentiis.  I adore her and her food is simple, tasty, and easy to prepare.  So this caught my eye and I picked up the package for the Classic Minestrone Soup.  It comes in a cute little box which includes white beans, pasta, dried vegetables, and herbs.  A lot of times I don't feel that the dried vegetables are substantial enough and I end up adding some of my own.  So I though I'd give this a try.

To make the soup all you have to add of your own ingredients are onion, olive oil, stock, and diced tomatoes.  Not bad!  Pantry items in my house, so I was all set!

So I made made the soup, and was pleasantly surprised that the vegetables were nice and hearty.  They had plumped up really well.  Carrots, cabbage, bell pepper, zucchini, and celery were all included and even recognizable   Great job Giada!  I didn't even need to add a thing.  This soup calls for vegetable broth, but I substituted chicken broth as I like the flavor better.  One of the best things is that the ingredients are straight forward.  This doesn't have all the additives that other packaged soup mixes have.  

The package says that this make 5 1 cup servings.  I'm not sure about you but I eat more than 1 cup of soup as a main course.  Even with the side of crusty bread!  So I would say that there are about 2-3 portions in here.  Not much so you might want to double this if you are cooking for a family. 

The soups gets a thumbs up from me!  It is really tasty.  Just perfect for the rainy weather.  I placed the soup in a nice handy take along container to heat up at work.  A nice thermos would be good as well and you can take this along with you most places.

You can find the soup at Target, or click here.

Try Giada De Laurentiis' Classic Minestrone Soup Starter Mix.  You can't go wrong!