Peculiar Spice Company: Cheesy Chicken Soup

I discovered the Peculiar Spice Co. a few years ago at a local craft show that MIL operates called Craft Patch. There was constantly a traffic jam of people around their booth because they were giving out free samples of all their products.

Peculiar Spice Co. produces and sells mixes: soup mixes, dip mixes, sweet mixes, side dish mixes. They are located on the south side of the Kansas City Metro area in a town called Peculiar, MO. It is now obvious where they got their name.

Of course I had to sample every single product that they offered and let me tell you, their products were GOOD. Even though everything tasted so great, I never did buy anything until this year. I think it’s because the craft show was always close to the holidays and I never felt like I could spend any money on myself (even for food?!?).

Well I made up for lost time this year. I bought six of their mixes last Saturday at Craft Patch. And on Sunday I mixed up a batch of their Cheesy Chicken Soup.

To make the soup you need the following:

Cheesy Chicken soup mix
16 oz Velveeta cheese
2-3 cups cooked chicken
8 cups of water


I took the easy way out and bought canned chicken.

First combine the water, soup mix and chicken in a large pot. This soup makes 14 cups of soup so you really do need a fairly large pot. Simmer on the stove for 25 minutes then stir in the Velveeta cheese until melted. That’s it. Seriously that’s how easy it was.

And oh my goodness does it taste good. Whatever they put in that spice mix just gives it the best flavor. I wanted to gobble up the entire pot. Instead I paced myself and packaged up the leftovers to go in my freezer.

So how does this compare to other soups from a cost perspective? I thought I saved my receipt from my shopping trip so I could do this right but of course now I can’t find it anywhere. I think I can remember the costs. It shouldn’t be that hard since I only had to buy two things. Ok, the cost to make the soup is as follows:

Soup mix – $4.50
Velveeta cheese - $3.89 for a 32 oz brick and I used half of it so $1.95
12 oz can chicken $2.12
Water – negligible

Total cost - $8.57
Divide by seven, two cup servings gives us a cost of $1.22 per serving.

This is not bad at all actually. A can of Progresso or Campbell’s Chunky soup would cost around this much or more unless you caught it on super sale. The store bought version would often be less than the two cup serving as well. So if you wanted to stretch the batch of soup into 8 servings to be more comparable to the canned version, your cost would be only $1.07.

So is it worth it? I was really, really impressed with this soup. It tastes great and it was really easy to make. It would be easy to throw on the stove when you get home on a weeknight. I like to support local businesses whenever I can and I will definitely be buying from them again in the future. I am really looking forward to trying the other four mixes I have in my pantry: Chicken Enchilada soup, Mexican Fiesta soup, Hashbrown Potato soup, and Hawaiian Chicken salad. I actually bought two Cheesy Chicken soup mixes so I’ll be making this one again!

Peculiar Spice Co. does have online and phone ordering so if you are interested please check out their website.