Nile Spice Soup, Red Beans & Rice, 1.8 Ounce (Pack of 12)

I've been using Nile Spice soups for many, many years and this is still one of my favorites, Not only is it good as a quick micro waveable lunch, but it is also great as an additive to my own homemade soups and chili. Add a little turkey, chicken, shrimp or andoille sausage and rev up the spices, and put a little cheese or plain yogurt on top and you can create a great dinner with some cornbread or tortillas. For those who don't like too much spice in food you will like this soup as it is gently flavored. For vegetarians it is a real treat. The price is great, especially as this is a subscribe and save item at Amazon. I prefer to empty the little cups of dry mix into a storage jar as I rarely use this soup without doing a little something to it. I find it is easier to keep one medium jar full than it is to stack a bunch of paper cups in my kitchen cabinet. Just takes a measuring spoon to figure out how much to use depending upon how much I want to prepare. Great stuff.

The first time I tried this product, it tasted...weird. It was not soup-like. I'm used to rice and beans being a dish, not a soup. I tried cutting back on the amount of water, to make it more solid, but that wasn't a good experience. There is a lot of spice in this, and reducing the water concentrated the spice to make it too hot for me. Next I tried increasing the amount of rice. I added 1/4 cup of instant rice, and used the recommended amount of water. That did the trick. After "cooking," it was a substantial (not soup) dish. There was too much volume in the cup for me to stir it, so I dumped it into a larger bowl. It tasted good; the spice spread out through the additional rice without diluting the flavor. Finally, I grated some cheddar cheese and mixed that in. Delicious! It tastes like the guts of a vegetarian burrito. With these modifications, I can recommend this as a backpacking meal. Light, easy to prepare, and substantial enough to be part of a real meal. I can't wait to try it on the trail this summer.

I love broth based soup. In fact, I love soup of ANY kind. If I am trying to lose a few pounds, soup is one of the first things I stock up on. Nile Spice, Red Beans and Rice soup is low fat which is good in itself. It is a little spicy but not so much that someone who did not like spicy would not eat it. If you like Mexican food, you will probably like this soup. Also, it is ALL NATURAL....sun ripened tomatoes, rice and red beans. It comes in individual containers so it is good for work or school. There is a lot of beans and rice in the container. You need HOT water, not warm for it to "cook" properly. If you don't use hot water or if you don't let it "sit" long enough, the beans are hard. This soup is priced right, very inexpensive for 12 portions. I have not tried any of the other soups by this company but I highly recommend this one.

I have been eating this soup for years and it is (was) one of my favorites. However, the soup has been unavailable for about 6 or more months. It was back in stock in May 2015 and I ordered but the soup (Best By Date 10Apr15) in this delivery does not taste the same. The old version had a nice kick to it, the new version is very bland and tasteless. Its missing something but I don't know what. Please go back to the original recipe.

This soup tastes great and the price is not bad. But the contents of the soup do not fully "cook" when prepared as instructed (I have the same issue with a different Nile Spice soup). Even after letting the soup sit tightly covered for 10 minutes, about a third of the beans and 2/3 of the rice are still mostly hard (watch your teeth). I won't be ordering any Nile Spice soups in the future.

If you like things super hot, this is the soup for you. I couldn't taste anything but the heat. I like moderately spicy foods, but this was too much. The texture was good, thick and rich.

First, let me acknowledge that my hot water comes from a water heater/cooler in my office. It's very hot, but I don't know the exact temperature and I expect it's somewhat south of boiling. Still, I've enjoyed just about every Nile soup using that same hot water. In this case, the rice doesn't seem to absorb the water no matter how long I let it sit, nor how frequent or infrequently I stir. It always comes out a bit crunchy. Other than that, the soup is very good and what I've come to expect from Nile, but with consistently crunchy rice.

I did find it hard to really soften the rice especially, as others have said. But it's quite tasty and easy to eat if you whiz the dry contents in a blender first, then put it back in the container and add hot water. This makes it into a nice thick porridge or corn grits consistency. I just use a personal blender and it takes a few seconds to transfer the dry contents abd grind, and another few seconds to wash out the blender container and blade unit. I like to add a teaspoon of coconut oil before stirring and allowing it to stand but I don't think the oil matters. I usually let it stand about 10 minutes. I work at home, but the ground dry stuff could easily be carried elsewhere if needed, maybe in a sealed plastic bag place back in the original container.