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	imp 2009-03-04 06:59 pm UTC (link)
	...Am I the only one who doesn't get what's so ZOMGTRASHY about "cream of" soups? Or why anything that comes in a can is only for people without taste buds? Plz halp. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	llama_treats 2009-03-04 07:07 pm UTC (link)
	Real cooks grow their own ingredients and make soup from scratch, you plebe. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	imp 2009-03-04 07:19 pm UTC (link)
	Boo. :( My definition of "from scratch" is "I cooked the ingredients and threw them in with some vegetable stock! OMG IT WAS SO HARD I HAVE TAKEN A MIND-BLOWING CULINARY JOURNEY!" (Reply to this)(Parent)

beccastareyes
2009-03-04 07:09 pm UTC (link)

I don't get it either. But I'm a grad student, so anything where the recipe involves 'take cans and bags of stuff, mix together and cook -- then freeze the bits you don't eat for next week's lunches' and doesn't taste like crap or is completely unhealthy is a winner. I like cooking, but I'm usually too busy with 'stuff that pays the bills' to do it.

And 'cream of' soup keeps better than most dairy products, so I'm more likely to have it than cream.

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	imp 2009-03-04 07:20 pm UTC (link)
	I know, right? I fail as a cook, but I just don't have time for all that! (Reply to this)(Parent)

chibikaijuu
2009-03-06 10:08 am UTC (link)

Canned evaporated milk. That's what I usually use in the place of cream (or even whole milk). Unless the fat content is absolutely necessary to the recipe, evaporated skimmed milk works nearly as well and, well, has negligible amounts of fat. And that is how I can make mac & cheese without whoever-is-currently-on-a-diet in the house yelling at me.

(Well, my brother whines because I put vegetables in, but basically I don't care what he thinks.)

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	beccastareyes 2009-03-06 02:36 pm UTC (link)
	Thanks. I shall have to experiment with that. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

chibikaijuu
2009-03-06 08:52 pm UTC (link)

It's really useful, and I know it comes in both whole and skimmed varieties (not sure about part-skimmed). It's also fairly inexpensive, at least if you get the store brand, and works pretty well in white sauces or cream soups (the flavor and consistency is a little different, but still delicious). It does have a bit of it's own flavor to it, so I do tend to avoid it in custard desserts unless the original recipe suggests it.

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wolfsamurai
2009-03-04 07:22 pm UTC (link)

I know that some people are down on "cream of" soups because they are seriously overloaded with sodium. Aside from that it's just a holier-than-thou thing, really. I say fuck 'em. I love cream of broccoli, steamed broccoli, rice, cheese, and chicken as a quick, easy, and tasty casserole. Oh sure, maybe I could do something similar without the canned soup (I know how I'd do so), but why?

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	dez_chan 2009-03-04 07:24 pm UTC (link)
	That and don't they make low-sodium versions of "cream of" soups? Or, if you're seriously that picky, I'm pretty sure I've seen high end "cream of" soups from those healthy organic stores... (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	bobafeis 2009-03-05 06:55 am UTC (link)
	I have a fancy high-end cream of portabello from one of those stores. It's pretty good, but not as good as cream of mushroom from a can. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	lady_ganesh 2009-03-05 07:50 pm UTC (link)
	The low-sodium ones are terrible, though. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	chibikaijuu 2009-03-06 10:09 am UTC (link)
	Yeah. Instead of too much salt, there's none at all. (Reply to this)(Parent)

frequentmouse
2009-03-04 07:27 pm UTC (link)

From a nutritional point of view, they're pretty much death in a can. They're also the ultimate middle-American hot dish Lake Wobegon Church Dinner style ingrediant. Tasty, bad for you (not as bad for you as full-test Alfredo or Carbonara, but I digress), and to me inescapably tied to days my Mom was too sick to really cook and we'd end up with something called Sooper Supper which was Campbell's Vegetable Soup cooked with hamburger and served over toast. Green beans with cream of mushroom soup was a company dinner treat.

I do not much miss the Eisenhower administration, but I wish I could cook that stuff non-ironically.

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issendai
2009-03-05 03:32 am UTC (link)

It is the way of my people to base all food on Campbells cream of mushroom soup even when we're feeling perfectly fine. ESPECIALLY when we're feeling fine. Topping of fried onion bits in a can non-negotiable, side dish of lime Jello embedded with carrot shavings also non-negotiable (but you can take a little and hide it under the casserole scraps if you really don't want to eat it).

This goes a long way toward explaining the food snobbery re: cream-of soups.

Oddly, my very non-snobbish mother has stopped cooking with Campbells and onion bits. She gets her prefab food from a store where you assemble the dish yourself and freeze it, instead. It's tasty, takes almost no time, and costs a fortune; so apparently the deciding factor wasn't that it is the way of my people to love Campbell's, so much as that it is the way of my people to be overworked and uninspired by cooking, and anything that takes fewer than four steps to make is a godsend.

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	frequentmouse 2009-03-05 07:21 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, gawd, the prepackaged dinner places. All the social exposure of going out to dinner and you still have to clean your own kitchen at the end of the meal. How is that an advantage? Not to mention that what keeps me from cooking these days is the pain of standing up and using my hands; at least in my own house I can do veg prep sitting at the computer. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	julesnoctambule 2009-03-04 07:42 pm UTC (link)
	Too much sodium, too expensive. There's no way I can justify paying 'cream of' prices for a single can of condensed soup when I know I can make a perfectly good white sauce in six minutes from ingredients I already have in the kitchen. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sceach 2009-03-31 03:43 am UTC (link)
	this. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	miraba 2009-03-05 03:20 am UTC (link)
	I love the "cream of X" soups. Especially in the winter. (Reply to this)(Parent)

indis_earfalas
2009-03-05 12:01 pm UTC (link)

It's just bullshit snobbery ... and generally undeserved, aside from the boggle about all of the salt.

My best friends father is Le Cordon Bleu (Amsterdam) trained and his favourite dinner, on his night off, is baked beans on toast. Also, the wildest soup he taught me how to make ALL comes out of cans (well, not the chicken thighs or sprig of thyme).

There is a time and a place for cans ... and if even HE can use them sometimes, I think the rest of us will survive them too.

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	pfeffermuse 2009-03-06 05:13 am UTC (link)
	Personally, for me, it's the sodium in the canned stuff that kills it for me, as I tend to stick with a low sodium diet. When I eat something containing high levels of sodium, it'll sometimes have either a very heavy salt taste that overpowers the flavour, or I'll wind up retaining water and feeling it in my joints. (Reply to this)(Parent)

sceach
2009-03-31 03:40 am UTC (link)

Personally I find the taste of high fructose corn syrup disgusting. Even I like some tuna noodle casserole from time to time, because my mom fed it to me when I was very little and it has lodged in my psyche. But I wouldn't say it's something I would eat on a regular basis. To me, it doesn't taste as good, it doesn't make me feel good when i eat it...I don't understand why it's like, either YOU ARE OPPRESSING ME BY SUGGESTING I OUGHT TO EAT STUFF THAT ISN'T FULL OF CHEMICALS or GOD I GUESS IF I DON'T KILL THE CHICKEN MYSELF IT ISN'T COOKING. Surely there's a happy medium?

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