I tried tomato soup from Heinz, Baxters and Blackwell - but one 55p tin is clear winner

It feels like it's never ending these days. Every trip to the supermarket yields more pain: that's gone up, that's got smaller. Didn't there used to be four in this multipack?

And that's on top of soaring energy bills, the ridiculous price of diesel and every Tom, Dick and Vodafone putting your monthly price up by more than the cost of inflation, mid-contract. It's probably safe to say, then, that we're all looking for ways to cut a few corners here and there and pinch whatever pennies we've got left until the bronze rubs off. In that spirit, I decided it was time to stop being snooty, shake off all pretension, and plunge into the dark recesses of the very cheapest, roughest and what I assumed would be the most repellent of all food ranges, the Asda Smart Price range.

It's no secret that soup is a very easy, quick, cheap and hearty meal. Tomato soup is one of your five a day, and it's a good way to get something fairly low calorie, high nutrition without breaking the bank.

As a dull consumer without enough hobbies, I decided to pitch the big boys of the soup world against one another in a gruelling face-off way back in 2022 during the peak of the cost of living crisis. The prices may have changed (read: all gone up) since, but the findings remain as true today as they ever were.

Heinz Tomato Soup - £1.59

First up, Heinz Tomato Soup. A classic. Old reliable. Est 1869. What could go wrong?

Well not much, really. It's creamy, it's thick, it's tasty. If anything, it might be a bit too creamy. It's got 8.6g of fat per tin so it definitely feels like it's tipping into 'indulgence' rather than a healthy choice, though it is not the fattiest soup here. It also contains 89% tomatoes, the second highest available on test. A solid soup choice though, but also not the cheapest at £1.59 a tin.

Baxters - £2.15

Next up is Baxters cream of tomato soup. For me, this is bottom of the pile. Firstly, this soup is the only one of the five here that's not gluten free. That in itself is quite baffling - why did they feel the need to add wheat flour in? One disclaimer is that I haven't had it recently (I can't eat wheat any more), for that reason, but I have had it in the past.

Second, it has the lowest tomato content of all five here, at just 66%, lower than the cheapest Asda soup. Despite that, it's four times more expensive than the cheapest soup and the most expensive option here (based on Asda prices as of October 20). It does, however, contain slightly less fat per tin (8g) than the others, except Asda's own.

Crosse & Blackwell Tomato Soup - £1.30

I've found this one harder to track down recently. This one is the creamiest of all and has the highest tomato content of all at 91%, taking top spot for tomatoes. What's more, it is gluten free - but it comes in at a whopping 12.7g of fat, the fattiest soup here by some margin.

Asda Smart Price Tomato Soup - 55p

For me, this is the winner. What I expected: some thin, watery nightmare, like gone off tomato sauce watered down. What I actually got: an easy going, filling, thick tomato soup. Genuinely, this soup has a nicer, more natural, more tomatoey flavour than any of the others. Now, it has only got 67% tomato content, so it's the lowest for tomatoes here. But it's also got the lowest fat too, at just 4.8g, less than half the fat content of some on this test. And it's gluten free - no wheat flour thickener.

It's just the right consistency - more like tomato, and less like double cream - and it has a light, zingy aftertaste which is moreish without being overpowering. It's also just 55p a tin, so you can buy between one and four tins of it to one tin of some of the above. Pound for pound, this is the best value tomato soup out there right now, even if it's not as indulgent or 'high quality'.