Vegetable soup with stars Podravka
These soups were quite popular back in the Soviet Union, but today they're far from the same... full of chemicals! But let's take a look at what's available.
This product is from the well-known Croatian company Podravka, which produces the well-known Vegeta seasoning. This packet isn't cheap... 52 grams net weight and costs approximately 350 tenge... based on spring 2023 prices...
Let's look at the packaging
This manufacturer is trying to squeeze every last bit of benefit out of its former glory, and therefore tries to preserve the same exterior design that existed when their products became legendary... And so it is here – they've preserved much that, one way or another, "fragments of childhood memory"...
A foil-wrapped paper bag... shiny in places. The main colors are yellow, red, and blue... On the front is a drawing of a rooster perched on the edge of a bowl of soup... The inscription reads: Vegetable soup with stars. 4 servings. Podravka logo.
The back of the package is written in Russian, Ukrainian, and Kazakh. For more useful information, read: Vegetable soup with star-shaped pasta. Dehydrated product / 4 servings / 1 liter of soup. Directions: Pour the contents of the package into 1 liter of boiling water and stir. Simmer for 8 minutes in a semi-covered container, stirring occasionally. Ingredients: pasta 58% (durum wheat semolina, eggs), iodized salt, palm fat, corn starch, sugar, flavor enhancer (MSG, MSIn), dried vegetables 3% (carrots, onions, celery, red bell peppers, leeks), chicken fat, yeast extract, spices, parsley leaf. May contain traces of milk.
Storage conditions: Manufactured by - date, best before - date... Shelf life: 18 months... Manufacturer: Podravka d.d., A. Croatia.
We are preparing PODRAVKA vegetable soup
Well, let's boil some water, open the bag... smell a light spicy aroma...
We scoop out some of the contents with a spoon. It's not crumbly, but rather in chunks... Okay... there are some stars like these...
Cook strictly according to the recipe. After 8 minutes, you'll have this runny mess... It smells like a Maggi or Galina Blanca cube dissolved in boiling water... and the color, and the taste... it barely even smells like vegetables...
A lone star-shaped mess, a tiny handful at the bottom... with an incomprehensible taste...
Not salty, not rich, tasteless, you could say! You need to add salt, black and red pepper yourself, chop up the green onions and dill... in short, it's better to cook it yourself, it'll be cheaper and tastier.
My verdict: bad. Very bad. No nostalgia at all. Back then, these soups were much tastier, more filling, and healthier—now the manufacturer has completely lost its conscience!
Mikhail Dmitrienko
Alma-Ata