12 Canned Soups That Totally Upgrade Mac And Cheese

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Mac and cheese is the kind of dish that you dress up or down, depending on the kinds of ingredients you throw into it. When you think of boxed macaroni and cheese, for example, it's pretty straight forward — not too spicy, and good for palates that prefer things on the milder side. Canned soup is kinda the same way. Mild. Accessible to the common tongue and wallet. Keeper of culinary memories. This is why so many people serve those foods to their kids at lunch. They're likable when everything else is not. It's also the likely reason why so many of us still love macaroni and cheese or canned chicken noodle soup as adults. We grew up eating them.

However, things have changed from the time we were wee ones until now. Our taste buds have been introduced to a few more flavors. We prefer to taste the interweavings of things — garlic and white pepper and smoky paprika — and can only just imagine how such flavors could augment our beloved pasta and cheddar or possibly our soups. As a byproduct of this, we figure out that many soups have become more sophisticated and have taken on flavor profiles that are very grown-up, nuanced even. As such, these soups are the perfect addition to mac and cheese. Makes sense, right? All that flavor rolled up into one 10-ounce can. While such a mash-up always tastes better when you toss in additional ingredients, like clams or chipotle peppers or even olives, the canned soup of your choice combined with your cheesy pasta is enough to totally upgrade your mac and cheese. Here's a look.

Broccoli cheese soup counts among the tastiest soups around. It's typically thicker than many other soups, partly because of the always umami, sometimes pungent cheesy base. When you're making it from scratch, you start the cooking process by sweating some aromatic vegetables, like onions and carrots, and then making a roux from there by dropping in some flour or cornstarch, depending on your preference. The addition of mac and cheese to the whole shebang augments everything you love about broccoli cheddar soup. The cheese makes it, well, cheesier, and the mac gives a thickness that flour and broccoli bits alone can't.

However, you don't have to start with homemade broccoli cheese soup to get all the benefits that it's going to give your mac and cheese. You just need to start with a really thick soup — a bisque soup, to be exact. Bisque soups are automatically thicker, something you want from a cheesy soup. That's why you might want to consider something like Campbell's Slow Kettle Style Creamy Broccoli Cheddar Bisque as your soup of choice for this mash-up. If you want more flavor still, try preparing some roasted broccoli in garlic in the oven before adding it to your broccoli and cheese mac.

You know, Italian cuisine gets an awful lot right. Aside from the fact that it embraces a mean pasta recipe or two, there is an understanding among Italian chefs that both beans and pasta actually belong in the same dish. If that same dish also includes a bit of smoky bacon along with some shavings of Parmesan cheese, then all the better. It's going to be hearty and delicious and hopefully, very, very cheesy. Fortunately for those of us who may not have grown up with an Italian nonna, there's a way to bring some of these flavors into the same dish without having to get all labor-intensive about it — just mix some mac and cheese with your favorite bean and bacon soup.

This soup/mac-and-cheese combo tastes good when it's allowed to stay thick and creamy. If you follow the instructions on the soup can — depending on the brand — you'll likely be encouraged to add one can of water to one can of soup. To make it truly tasty, you'll want to alter the steps a bit. First, try substituting some milk for the water. Second, add the dry macaroni pasta to the soup and allow it to simmer on the stove until the pasta is cooked. It'll take on the smoky flavor of the soup and be fairly thick to boot. Stir in some Parmesan and a little bit of cheese sauce to both flavor and thicken the soup. And if it's not smoky enough for you, consider frying up some bacon bits and dropping those, along with a tiny smidgen of bacon grease, into the soup before serving it.

Canned chili mac soup is already a big thing, so it isn't a question as to whether or not chili plus mac and cheese would taste good. Your comfort-food lovin' taste buds know that for certain already. The only thing that would make this tasty treat better is to add a homemade touch to it.

For that homemade touch, start with your favorite saucy mac and cheese recipe. And while you may think that adding more cheese sauce makes it all the saucier, that's not the only thing that lends to the sauciness of mac and cheese. The type of noodles you use has something to do with it, too. While it's fine to use elbow macaroni, you may have better luck with shells or corkscrew pastas. The shape of these allow the pasta to hold more sauce. Think of all that ooey gooey cheese sauce hiding in those deep crevices, and you'll understand why the pasta augments the sensation of sauciness. But that doesn't just help the cheesy part of the dish. It'll benefit the chili part. Those noodles will hang onto the juice and spices of the chili, too.

As for what type of chili you should think about, maybe try Wendy's No-Bean Chili. The chili made by the fast food burger chain is a good option for those who want lots of meat and no beans. However, if you're a vegetarian, a thick bean chili with bits of celery, carrots, and corn would make for a fine chili mac, too.

One of the yummiest comfort food combinations has to be a grilled cheese sandwich with a little tomato basil soup to dip it in. The crispy crunch of the bread. The stringy gooeyness of the cheese. The tang of the tomato and basil juxtaposed against the umami of the cheese. Just so yummy. For those who think that maybe this combo would be all the better if only it were all sitting in one bowl nice and pretty, we offer a tasty alternative: mac and cheese mixed in with some creamy roasted tomato basil soup. While the mac and cheese doesn't have the bread — not exactly, anyway — you do get a nice dose of carbs plus all that cheese when you add the pasta. And bonus. It floats around every so nicely in your tomato soup.

However, if you still want the crunch that comes from the bread being toasted in a frying pan, then you'll want to MacGyver the mac and cheese recipe a bit before combining it with the soup. Once you've made up a batch of the cheesy mac on the stove top, you'll want to give the dish a bit of detour in the oven. This step, plus a sprinkle or two of your own panko breadcrumbs, turns it into the ultimate mac and cheese recipe. The addition of the breadcrumbs brings back the crunch that you're used to when you eat grilled cheese sandwiches. Once you've made it all nice and crumbly by adding the toasted breadcrumbs, drop it into the tomato basil soup of your choice.

When you combine cream of mushroom soup with your mac and cheese recipe of choice, the umami from the mushrooms collides with the umami from the cheese in the best way possible. You're guaranteed to get plenty of flavor even if you do nothing else with this combo but combine the soup and the cheesy mac. However, your mushroom soup's flavor will be upleveled even more if you doctor up some additional mushrooms and add them to it. Sautéeing the mushrooms in olive oil with a little garlic and fresh thyme and rosemary squeezes out more flavor. Or you can try sautéeing some mushrooms, bacon, and onions together before stirring them into your store-bought can of soup.

Once you get the thick, almost smoky flavor you want from the mushroom soup, it's time to stir it into the mac and cheese. If you just want to add a little flavor to it, just add maybe a ½ cup to 1 cup of the soup to a big batch of mac and cheese. This is a taste-as-you-go kinda prospect. You can also add more of the sautéed mushrooms to the mix without increasing the amount of cream of mushroom soup you add to the mash-up. If, on the other hand, that you'd really like a little mac and cheese with your mushroom soup, go ahead and stir in more of the soup. It'll be tasty either way.

For those who might feel that a mash-up of taters and mac is too carby, too comfort foody, we remind you that pierogi dumpling recipes typically include a whole lotta mashed potatoes stuffed inside of a whole pocket of pasta. Some of those recipes even have cheese and other delish ingredients, too. And that nummy combo gets requests for seconds. Clearly, there's something to this flavor combo that's pretty unbeatable. As such, it isn't much of a stretch to think that combining some baked potato and cheddar and bacon soup with your mac and cheese would be a flavor most excellent. All you're really doing is changing the type of pasta and potatoes you're using and possibly the ratio of ingredients.

This one's an easy mash-up, thanks to the fact that the soup already contains cheese. You really only need to add some cooked noodles to the soup. However, if you want to make it cheesier, you have a couple of options. The simplest, of course, is to sprinkle it with some grated cheese. An easy alternative is to open up a jar of something like Pace Mild Nacho Jalapeño Queso Cheese Dip. This gives your mac and cheese/baked potato bacon and cheddar dish a spicy kick, and it's easy to stir into the soup. Finally, the soup is a good receptacle for your skillet-fried leftover mac and cheese, particularly if you don't have enough to feed everyone in the house. Adding it to the soup stretches the recipe out and ensures that everyone gets a bit of that gooey mac a second time around.

Lasagna recipes combine pasta, marinara/red sauce, and cheese. The tastiest of these recipes have extra cheese and pasta to chew on, so mixing your favorite mac and cheese recipe with lasagna-style soup is like thickening up your go-to lasagna recipe without having to break out the lasagna pan. The right lasagna soup comes with other ingredients, like sausage, that flavor up the mac-and-cheese-and-lasagna-soup combo even more. And if you really want this soup to be totally loaded, adding other ingredients, like sliced olives, fresh spinach, and sliced mushrooms give you basically lasagna in a bowl.

If you want to keep some of the character of lasagna, try dumping the combined ingredients into a baking dish and topping it with grated cheddar and mozzarella. That, and some panko breadcrumbs, plus a few more crumbles of cheese and 15 to 20 minutes in the oven, will totally transform this mash-up into something more. Naturally, the best way to enjoy this casserole-y soup is with a gigantic soup spoon and plenty of grated Parmesan cheese to top it off.

Mixing your mac and cheese with French onion soup gives it both a sweetness and a savoriness that might be missing from your favorite pasta dish on its own. This flavor bomb arises from a mix of beef broth that's infused with wine, and on the best occasions, brandy, and a big dose of caramelized onions. A common feature of this soup is the big hunk of French bread that's loaded up with toasted Parmesan cheese. The cheesy French toast adds thickness to a broth that would be, well, very brothy without its presence. The bread soaks up the broth, turning the soup into a thick, hearty meal. Now, imagine how thick and savory the soup would become if your thick mac and cheese recipe were hanging out in it, too.

For a more heavenly combo, swap out French onion soup for the water in your mac and cheese recipe. It'll flavor the pasta with that rich beef broth. You'll introduce the cheese to the recipe via the cheesy bread that you place on top of the soup. This you'll bake onto the top of the soup. For bonus flavor and crunch, top the bread with some French's fried onions and then plenty of cheese. Parmesan is good, but something creamy, like Gouda or even baked Brie might add some unexpected flavorful fun to this oniony mac and cheese mash-up.

Spicy chipotle chicken and corn chowder soup gives your mac and cheese a South-of-the-Border flavor. It's a fire-roasted flavor that gets a cooling reprieve thanks to the sweetness of the corn in the chowder. And as if the mac and cheese and all those chunks of chicken weren't enough to add some bulk to the dish, the soup also boasts potatoes and carrots, too. Because it's a corn chowder, this soup is creamy, just the thing you didn't know your mac and cheese needed until you thought about it just now. You're welcome.

It's also thicker than many other kinds of soups. There's an argument for just mixing together a can of the soup with at least an equal measure of mac and cheese. If the soup's too spicy for your taste, combining the two dishes will tone down the spice without completely taking away the flavor. If you feel like it's missing the crunch factor you'd normally get from crumbling up crackers in your soup, don't be shy about giving it a bit of a crunch. However, in keeping with the spirit of the dish, consider crumbling up some nacho cheese-flavored tortilla chips into the chipotle chicken chowder mac instead of crackers.

Have you ever noticed that at nearly every barbecue you've ever been to there is some variation on barbecued grilled chicken, corn on the cob, and macaroni and cheese? That's because those items just taste freakin' delicious together. It's all the better if the corn on the cob spends a little time on the grill before being rolled out, along with everything else. It probably should come as no surprise then that Progresso made a variation of this theme: BBQ-Style Grilled Chicken and Fire Roasted Corn Soup.

Sadly, it's missing that gooey cheesy macaroni and cheese side you've grown to love so much. The best way to remedy this is to add the mac and cheese into the soup. The soup's tomato base gets thickened up by the thick cheese and the pasta. If you want a pasta that's both pretty and tasty, consider making your macaroni and cheese with a combo of large and small shells. Or be really bold and drop a few cheese-stuffed tortellini in there, too. Finally, for a stronger barbecue flavor, consider adding some of your favorite homemade barbecue sauce or smoked paprika to amp up that smoky flavor.

New England-style clam chowder is one of the creamiest soups around. Let's start with what's in the best chowder recipes that make them so yummy. In this case, this style of clam chowder is dairy, dairy, and more dairy at its base – half-and-half, usually, though there is an argument for using whole cream for some extra creamy richness. Thick chunks of bacon give it a smidgen of smokiness, though if you prefer, you can try ham or salted pork. Aromatics like celery, onions, and garlic, and sometimes, even carrots sautéed in butter bolster the flavor even further. And then, of course, you have all those juicy clams. Imagine how delish all of this would be as a base for the creamiest mac and cheese this side of Wisconsin dairy country. 

This combo of flavors is umami plus. If you'd like to keep it creamy white, use white cheddar, Parmesan, and/or Brie to flavor the macaroni and cheese. Add chunks of fresh clams from the grocery deli to amp up the seafood flavor, and if you're really feeling that ocean vibe, maybe throw in some shrimp, too.

There's a reason why dishes like crab Alfredo have gotten so popular in recent decades. That combination of thick cheese, succulent crab, and hearty noodles is difficult to beat. And while the dish is a great treat to get when you visit your Italian restaurant of choice, it can be a little much to create on your own if your talents lie outside the kitchen. That's when a cheat like mixing mac and cheese with some cream of crab soup comes in handy. You get all the basic elements of the crab Alfredo dish without the work.

As far as upping the ante on this one, there are some pretty simple steps you can take for that. Sprinkle on some Old Bay Seasoning to give the flavor a bit of a zip. Panko breadcrumbs mixed with Parmesan cheese and flavored with white pepper or Sriracha creates a crunchy, slightly spicy crust. This flavor/texture combo hearkens back to the kind of mac and cheese recipes you ate in the school cafeteria as a kid, yet makes the dish all grown up at the same time.