I cannot remember how I came into possession of this soup. I can vaguely remember somebody looking to give it away at work and being one not to pass up on the opportunity of a free lunch, I kindly took it off their hands!

Being a regular consumer of Heinz and Baxters soups, this was the first time I'd sampled one from Tesco's own range. The appearance of the packaging is not particularly appealing. The label (possibly different to the one pictured with this review) is largely and understandably a pea green colour with an image of a spoonful of the soup on the front. I suppose pea and ham soup is not going to be the most visually striking product but I do not think this image does the product any favours in terms of advertising! Most of what is shown on the spoon thankfully looks out of focus but what can be seen is still difficult to identify.

The rear of the label gives the nutritional information per 200g serving. I'm not sure if I've ever shared a tin of soup so per 400g tin there is 190 calories, 11.2g protein, 32g carbohydrate of which 4.4g sugars, 2g fat of which 0.6g saturates, 7.6g fibre and 0.8g sodium with the salt equivalent being 2g.

Also at the rear of the label is the allergy advice, which makes interesting reading! As well as stating that the product contains milk and celery, the section advises "Recipe: No nuts - Ingredients: Cannot guarantee nut free - Factory: No nuts". I think a "may contain traces of nuts" would have sufficed!

The actual ingredients section also warrants a read. The soup, as you expect, contains ham (2.5%) and also bacon. What I did not necessarily expect was for these two to contain almost as many of their own ingredients (in the form of for example - water, salt, preservatives and stabilisers) as the actual soup itself.

To open this soup you will have to get out your trusty tin opener as this one does not come with a ring pull lid. Once opened you are likely to wonder how to get the lid back on! The sight you are met with is almost stomach churning with as you look at a green, gloopy and congealed slop. I've chosen not to write what it actually reminded me of! When poured into a bowl there was no improvement as half of the contents remained set to the cylindrical tin shape until it was stirred. There was also no smell from the soup, something that I was quite please about!

The soup took approximately three minutes to heat up and thankfully the heat had improved things massively! The product now looked like a pleasant thick pea and ham broth. There were clearly a lot of peas (25%) visible but it was also good to see a large amount of ham/bacon. There was also now a nice aroma coming and for the first time I was actually thinking I might enjoy eating it.

On tasting the soup I was almost thrilled that it was acceptable. The pea flavour was very strong but unfortunately I did not really get anything from the ham, despite it being plentiful and despite all its ingredients! There was also good texture to the soup but I did however find myself getting a bit bored of eating it after a while as although the pea flavour was strong, it was a bit monotonous on its own!

As I mentioned, this soup did not cost me anything nut looking on mysupermarket.co.uk, it is priced at 52p which I think is average value for money.