Give Mac And Cheese An Ultra-Rich Upgrade With A Canned Ingredient

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Mac and cheese in its many forms has been America's comfort food since the Great Depression. These days, you'll find it dressed up with truffle oil and expensive cheeses, but there was a time when this classic dish was a way to stretch the grocery budget and keep bellies full. Back then, home chefs often used canned condensed soup as an inexpensive and quick sauce for pasta dishes like mac and cheese – a hack that'll still get you an absolutely creamy and flavorful meal without all the extra work and money.

In an exclusive interview with The Takeout, Jamie Milne, content creator and cookbook author of "Everything Delish," explained that condensed soups can create ultra-flavorful mac and cheese. The same Campbell's Condensed Soups that our ancestors used during the Great Depression still work wonders today (much better than the Depression-era hack that used onions and peanut butter). "Cream of mushroom, cream of cheddar, or cream of chicken are great options," Milne said. "They add a really rich, savory base to the cheese sauce and make the mac and cheese extra creamy without having to build the sauce from scratch."

Condensed soup is extra-rich on its own; it's so concentrated that it comes out as a jelly-like lump and doesn't turn into proper soup until you add water. All the flavors of a regular soup are packed down into that gelatinous mass, and they infuse into the mac and cheese as the soup melts into the mixture. There's no need for milk and butter when you make it this way – the condensed soup does a lot of heavy lifting to cream up the dish.

Condensed soup will create an ultra-rich flavor and creamy texture to both stovetop mac and cheese and the baked version, but you do have to rework the rest of your seasoning in the dish. Jamie Milne explained that you have to account for the extra ingredients in the soup itself, so you don't end up overdoing it on the other elements you add. " ... Because condensed soup already contains salt, cream, and thickeners, you'll want to reduce some of the milk or cream in the recipe and hold back slightly on seasoning," she said. "Otherwise, the sauce can become too salty or too thick."

Milne suggested swapping 1 cup of liquid with a can of condensed soup for the best results. Further amp up the flavor with mix-ins like bacon and broccoli or some chopped hot dogs. Here's a list of ingredients to add and avoid for an epic batch of mac and cheese, and if you're really ready to try something new, go for unexpected additions like kimchi or using other canned ingredients, such as Spam.