Watmuff & Beckett soups and risottos: Review

I’ve got to admit, I’d never actually heard of Bath-based company Watmuff & Beckett until a few weeks ago. The company, based at Bath Business Park, was launched by a pair of friends in 2010 (guess what their names are…?) and focuses on a range of premium chilled soups and risottos that are available at various local independent retailers, as well as at Asda and Whole Foods. Combining Andrew Watmuff’s love of farming and Michael Beckett’s love of cooking, the pair use only natural ingredients and are committed to sourcing sustainable produce from UK producers.

Their “nearly ready” ranges consist of seven soups and seven risottos, providing both meaty and non-meaty options. I was sent three risottos and three soups to try, ranging from more summery options to those with flavours more suited to the autumn and winter months. The packaging is fantastic – I love the bowl-shaped windows on the soup pots, and the risotto pots are also clear underneath the cardboard sleeve, allowing you to see the contents within.

Both soups and risottos can either be warmed through on the hob or heated in the microwave in their plastic tubs for 5 minutes each. While we’re no strangers to doing this with tubs of soup, we were intrigued to see whether the risotto would still have enough bite and a decent consistency after this process…

In all honesty, the soups were more to our taste than the risottos. We began with the Fresh Summer Gazpacho: a refreshing blend of tomatoes, cucumber and red peppers with natural seasonings with a vibrant red colour and a refreshing, summery smell. We loved the consistency, with the soup not pureed completely and still featuring chunks of tomato skin, and it had a beautiful punch from the black pepper.

The Spiced Sausage & Three Bean Soup was a hearty, rich soup of generous chunks of spiced sausage, three types of bean (cannellini, butter beans and kidney beans), tomatoes and peppers. Thick, chunky and with a paprika smokiness, this was delicious, although probably more of a winter than a summer meal.

The final soup of the three was the brand’s “Perfect Pea & Fresh Mint”…now, I’m not the biggest fan of peas, but this was lovely and fresh, and again with a beautiful texture. The peas had been blended but the soup wasn’t completely smooth which I loved – however, I think they could do with adding a little more mint…

We were pleased to see that the rice used in all three risottos still had a nice bite to it, and the consistency of each one was perfect. The Wild Mushroom, Lemon & Thyme was probably my favourite of the three, packed full of earthy slices of chestnut and wild mushrooms which were beautifully cooked, and with a subtle scent of lemon. If I had one complaint, it would be that the thyme was maybe slightly overpowering, and could potentially do with being toned down.

The Chicken, Leek & Bacon risotto also had some great points: generous quantities of the three key ingredients, and a beautiful smell of leek when the lid was removed after microwaving. The chicken was full of flavour, but a little overdone, and while the pieces of bacon looked appealing, they were a little bland with none of the expected saltiness.

My least favourite of the risottos was the Summer Vegetable & Pesto – but then again, as I said earlier, I’m not the world’s biggest fan of peas! This risotto smelled and tasted strongly of pesto (a good thing), but seemed to have more liquid than the others. It was equally generous, however, in terms of the peas, leek and broad beans that it contained. The one big problem for us with this risotto was that the broad beans weren’t shelled, which somewhat destroyed our enjoyment of the meal.

So, good points and bad points, and there was no denying, from our point of view, that the soups were more to our taste than the risottos. They’re really not badly priced, though, with 600g pots of both soups and risottos priced from £2.70. Head to Asda, though, and you’ll occasionally find special offers on the Watmuff & Beckett range, including buy one get one half price deals.

For more information about Watmuff & Beckett, visit www.watmuffandbeckett.co.uk.

Please note: these products were received free of charge, but in no way impacted on our opinion. We were not obliged to write a positive review, and the company did not see this review before it was put up on the site.