Kroger’s Hearty Loaded Baked Potato and Steak Ready to Serve Soup’s four main ingredients are water, potatoes, cooked beef and soybean oil, so I guess it should come as no surprise the soup tastes like a bunch of potatoes in water with some beef chunks floating around in there.

Saying I found this soup disappointing would be an understatement. With butter, milk and three kinds of cheese listed in the ingredients (cheddar, parmesan and blue cheese), one would expect this soup to have a rich and creamy cheese flavor — or at least some cheese flavor. It simply isn’t there. While the chowder-like soup base has a pleasing appearance and consistency, the taste is entirely bland, even by canned soup standards.

This soup otherwise has a lot going for it, too. The potatoes are large and relatively firm and the beef chunks are abundant, sizable, flavorful and mostly lean. The can I sampled did have one chunk of beef that was mostly fat, but that’s bound to happen occasionally even with the best quality control.

Kroger Hearty Loaded Baked Potato and Steak Ready to Serve Soup isn’t bad, per se, it’s just disappointingly bland.

If you decide to try it, plan on adding additional seasonings such as black or red pepper, some garlic powder or perhaps a little celery seed (I don’t like celery seed, but those who do would probably enjoy it in this soup). Mixing in a bit of sour cream could also make the soup creamier and more flavorful.

At $1.50 per large, 18.8-ounce can in South-Central Kentucky at the time of this review, Kroger Hearty Loaded Baked Potato and Steak is a decent value for canned soup, especially since it’s made with wholesome ingredients (no partially-hydrogenated oils here). I might start picking up a can from time to time, but I won’t be regularly stocking it in my ready-to-eat food pantry any time soon.

List Of Ingredients

Water, potatoes, cooked beef, soybean oil. Contains less than 2 percent of: modified corn starch, wheat flour, whey powder, salt, cream, salted butter (milk), soy protein concentrate, maltodextrin, potassium chloride, yeast extract, parmesan cheese (milk, cultures, salt, enzymes), artificial color, reduced lactose whey, natural flavor, sodium phosphates, onion powder, chives, cheddar cheese (cultured milk, salt, enzymes), blue cheese (cultured milk, salt, enzymes), potato maltodextrin, beef extract, spice and color (turmeric), sugar, disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate, succinic acid, cultured wheat gluten and mannitol.

Nutrition Facts

• Package Size: 18.8 oz (532 g)
• Serving Size: 1 cup (245 g)
• Servings Per Container: 2
• Calories: 230
• Calories From Fat: 150
• Total Fat: 16 g
• Saturated Fat: 4 g
• Trans Fat: 0 g
• Polyunsaturated Fat: 7 g
• Monounsaturated Fat: 4 g
• Cholesterol: 15 mg
• Sodium: 680 mg
• Total Carbohydrates: 14 g
• Dietary Fiber: 1 g
• Sugars: 2 g
• Protein: 6 g
• Vitamin A: 0%
• Vitamin C: 2%
• Calcium: 2%
• Iron: 6%