The Canned Ingredient To Add For Richer Chicken Noodle Soup

One of the hallmarks of chicken noodle soup is flavorful, comforting chicken broth — the perfect antidote to a common cold and a chilly day alike. If you prefer your soup on the creamier side, however, you don't have to swap a classic chicken noodle for another kind of soup altogether. Rather, you can transform the dish into something far more creamy by incorporating canned cream of chicken soup. The pantry addition yields a richer, milkier texture, adding all the more depth and flavor to your broth. 

The reason a can works so well is because cream of chicken soup generally consists of chicken stock, cream, and chicken meat. So, it already contains the important components of chicken noodle soup. It shouldn't be a surprise, then, that the canned ingredient is often used in chicken pot pies and various casseroles, but can also function as its own soup. Given those attributes, it makes sense to combine the can with your favorite chicken noodle soups, resulting in a dish that's creamy, but not too heavy.

As for how, exactly, to incorporate the canned ingredient into your chicken noodle soup, you have a few options. The amount you use will depend on how thick you want your soup. 

When adding cream of chicken noodle soup to your go-to chicken noodle broths, it's important to remember that each can represents a condensed soup. That means the can's contents are far more concentrated than your average soup. If you're enjoying a can as its own soup, you'll therefore want to add more liquid to balance out the concentration cream; in general, a can of cream of chicken soup calls for the addition of roughly 1 cup of milk or water, expanding on the concentrated, creamy flavor. 

This level of concentration holds up across soup brands, so you don't need to use any particular type of soup. Tasting Table, however, ranks Campbell's as one of the top soup companies. So, if you're looking to stock up on cans, Campbell's is a great starting point.

Given the inherent creaminess of almost all chicken soup concentrates, add two to three tablespoons to your next batch of broth. If you want your soup even creamier, you can always use more from the can, adding as you go. The broth of your favorite chicken noodle — whether you've made yours from scratch or reheated from a can of it — will thin out the cream of chicken soup, creating a well-balanced dish that's entirely tailored to your taste buds.