Add This Canned Ingredient To Your Chicken Noodle Soup Base To Make It 10x Heartier

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When the weather has a chill in the air, few things hit the spot quite like chicken noodle soup. It is a dish so beloved that versions of it exist all around the world, with every home cook putting their own unique spin on it. If you are the kind of person who never cooks their chicken noodle soup the same way twice, you probably often add different bits and bobs from your fridge to bulk it up. But on the days you are out of fresh produce, turn to the canned goods in your pantry instead, and consider canned mushrooms.

You read that right: not "canned condensed cream of mushroom soup," but "canned mushrooms." Now, mushrooms in brothy soups is not a new concept, whether dried, fresh, or canned. Folks in many parts of East and Southeast Asia have been doing it for a long time with incredibly tasty results, a quick and surefire way to make your chicken noodle soup ten times heartier! But if you just want to add mushrooms to your easy 20-minute chicken noodle soup recipe without changing its flavor profile too much, it is pretty easy to do. Just open a regular can of button mushrooms, drain and rinse them under running water, then trim and slice if necessary before adding them to the pot. An easy-to-find brand is Del Monte, which packs stems along with cap pieces into its cans. Since canned mushrooms are often salted, taste a piece from the can first and season your soup accordingly. 

If regular canned button mushrooms are not quite your jam, there are other varieties that come in a can. Geisha brand offers a whole range of different canned mushrooms to try in your chicken noodle soup, from delicately chewy shimeji mushrooms to flavorful sliced shiitake caps. If you feel like hunting for ingredients, a popular mushroom variety that is often found canned in Southeast Asia is straw mushrooms. When halved, their beautiful cross section become almost like tiny cups that hold extra soup. These are available stateside via the brand Polar. Different mushrooms offer different textures, so feel free to experiment and find one that you like.

Since you are already adding canned mushrooms to your chicken noodle soup, consider adding other aromatic ingredients as well to take it in a different flavor direction. Rice wine and oyster sauce turn it into an easy Chinese chicken and noodle soup recipe, delicious when served with Chinese egg noodles and canned shiitake mushrooms. Tom kha gai is a Thai chicken soup bolstered with ginger, lemongrass, and coconut milk. It can be made into a one-pot meal by adding rice noodles towards the end of the cooking process, in addition to canned straw mushrooms.