Chicken soups: an upstart wins.(up front)

If a cold catches up with you this season, there may be a place you can turn to for relief instead of your medicine chest: your stove.

Echoing moms, researchers at the University of Nebraska concluded in a study published in October 2000 in the cardiopulmonary journal Chest that many chicken soups seemed to reduce congestion, whether they were what researchers called Grandma's recipe or store-bought. We ladled out gallons of "medicine" recently to see which brands taste best.

How we tested. We began with blind tastings of 26 chicken soups and winnowed out those with obvious flaws such as a tinny taste or bitter herbs. That left eight contenders for super soup, including SoupMan (whose creator became a household name via "Seinfeld") and old standbys from Lipton and Campbell's. Some are dry mixes of chicken broth with vegetables to which you can add your own cooked chicken. We tried those types with and without meat. (If you add chicken, cook it thoroughly. See the report on page 20.) We also checked calories, fat, and sodium.

What we found. SoupMan is the man. Tasters called his refrigerated chicken vegetable soup (no noodles) "lick the bowl" tasty. It's as thick as a stew: Add salad and you have a meal. You also have a dent in your wallet: One cup costs about $3. Other SoupMan soups we tried were consistently high in quality, and in price.

Two mixes were very good but different. Bear Creek is a flavorful broth, a bit "hot," with vegetables and al dente pasta. It's even better if you add chicken. Lipton, a CR Best Buy, is tasty but basic. The rest are OK in a pinch.

Most of the soups are low in fat but high in sodium. In Trader Joe's, we found far more sodium than claimed: 664 mg per cup vs. 160 mg. Other labels were correct.

 
Quick Ratings 
 
In order of overall quality. 
 
             Product                       Per 
             All except SoupMan            cup              Fat  Sodium 
             have noodles.        Type     Cost   Calories  (g)  (mg) 
 
             EXCELLENT 
             The Original         refrig.  $2.99  150       5    930 
             SoupMan 
             Chicken Vegetable 
 
             VERY GOOD 
             Bear Creek           dry       0.80  120       1    820 
             Country ...