Which One is the Real Spinach Souffle?

Stouffer's Spinach Souffle is one of our favorite vegetable side dishes and one of the easiest to prepare. With just the two of us, although we could easily knock off a whole package in one meal, with all the salt and sugar they put in it, that is not a good idea. So we customarily enjoy most of the package at dinner and then mix what is left over with eggs in the morning.

Lately, though, we have been having a hard to finding the stuff on the supermarket shelves, and so although I had been putting off learning how to make it myself for years, it came to the point where I had to do something. Could Bird's Eye come to the rescue? Since they invented flash freezing in the first place, I thought I'd give them a try and bought a 20 ounce bag of their chopped creamed spinach with the sauce pellets. I'm sorry. I'm a vegetable nut, but that just didn't work on the first try. But I decided to experiment, putting a bunch of the succulent looking chopped baby spinach and a few chunks of frozen cream sauce in the Magic Bullet blender cup along with a bit of butter, some milk, and a couple eggs. Buzz, buzz, whir, whir, and it was starting to look like the real thing. I left out the sugar.

Next, just to create a "blind test" I poured this concoction into one of the Stouffer cooking trays that I had saved and washed just for the experiment, and microwaved according to the souffle package directions, subtracting a few minutes from the cooking time to compensate for thawing. At the same time I cooked a real Stouffer spinach souffle and when they were finished I took them to hubby to taste each of them and guess which was which.

He said the one he chose tasted better. It wasn't the Stouffers. I was really surprised because although both side dishes came out looking the same and tasted quite similar I was sure he would have chosen the saltier sweeter one. He didn't. He loves all of the Stouffer frozen foods. We both do. But in this taste test he said the one I made had to be the Stouffer's because not knowing which was which, he thought it tasted better.

In my opinion, although they both tasted great, the Stouffer's product had a slightly better texture. I'll try to fix that next time by adding a bit of cream cheese before blending. Do you think that will do it?

In any case, now when the store is out of our favorite vegetable dish, we won't be left on the sidelines any more, as I can substitute one that is just as delicious, less expensive, and healthier since I will have more control over the ingredients.