The Smelly Reason You Might Want To Leave One Aldi Soup On The Shelves

While everyone has their own favorite soup, it's hard to deny the popularity of a good broccoli cheddar. It's thick, creamy, and perfect for a cold day when you need a comfort food pick-me-up. Unfortunately, Aldi dropped the ball when it made its store brand Specially Selected Slow Cooked Broccoli and Cheddar soup. While it should have been a slam dunk, reviews consistently point out an unsettling chemical taste and a terrible aroma.

You eat with your eyes and your nose as much as your mouth, so a soup that smells rotten before you taste it is not going to encourage you to want to give it a try. We mentioned the soup in a list of cheap products from Aldi you want to avoid, noting that it smelled like dishwater and had an unpleasant consistency. Some people have even reported finding hard, wood-like chunks of broccoli. But the negative feedback doesn't stop there.

Some kinder reviews pointed out that it was loaded with salt and criticized the product for tasting more like a powdered brand than one that was slow-cooked. Things go downhill from there pretty quickly.

Reddit reviews have been harsh in describing the problems with Aldi's broccoli and cheddar soup. One Redditor called it disgusting and said the broccoli had the consistency of straw. Commenters agreed that it tasted like dishwater. Another said it tasted like cream of mushroom soup with stringy broccoli, and others reported the same. A third Reddit user referred to it as probably the worst thing they had ever bought from Aldi, claiming it tasted like chemicals but not broccoli or cheese. In a different thread, another Redditor described it as vile and suggested it could only exist as part of a money-laundering scheme. That's a pretty harsh critique to level against soup. One of the replies came from someone who said they threw it out after a couple of bites.

This is a shelf-stable soup, not a refrigerated or frozen item. There are no preservative chemicals listed in the ingredients. So, it may have developed a retort flavor from being heated to 250 degrees Fahrenheit to kill off bacteria, which is a process that can also eliminate flavor, replacing it with something vaguely dirty-tasting.

To be fair, some people did express support for the soup. But many who enjoyed it also noted that they had to add more broccoli, more cheese, and extra seasoning. At that point, you're basically making your own soup. If you're willing to go that far, you should just follow our broccoli cheddar soup recipe and make your own. It's going to taste a lot better, and you know exactly what went into it. That means no straw and no dishwater.