Spice Up Your Mac And Cheese By Adding One Bold Canned Soup

You can never go wrong with a classic mac and cheese recipe. Whether you're making it as a side dish or the main course, mac and cheese is a comfort meal that will always please a crowd. However, sometimes a plain bowl of homemade macaroni and cheese could use some extra flavor, and there are a number of ingredients that can help make your mac pop. If you're looking for a way to add a kick to your cheesy dish, there's one canned soup you need to be adding: Campbell's Condensed Spicy Nacho Cheese Soup.

Campbell's has a variety of spicy soups, from Buffalo chicken to spicy tomato, but the spicy nacho cheese is fan favorite according to customers. The soup features a cheesy base with red and jalapeño peppers that make it hot and delicious. While it's tasty on its own, it's just the right complementary mix-in to a make a mac and cheese a little more exciting. Not only does the soup add heat, but the pieces of peppers will add a bit of texture to your macaroni.

When you add this soup to homemade mac and cheese, it does a lot of heavy lifting in the flavor and texture department. Many homemade mac and cheese recipes call for making a roux to act a thickening agent, but this soup eliminates the need for one. Since it's condensed, it will already have a thick consistency, but to turn it into a sauce, you'll need to mix in milk. For a thinner sauce, you can add in ⅔ cup of milk and ⅔ cup of water, or for a thicker consistency, you can add ½ cup of milk.

You can add the soup and milk to a saucepan to combine while your pasta is cooking, then mix everything together once your sauce is to your desired consistency and your pasta is al dente. If you really want to save yourself the effort, you could even make this a no-boil recipe by combining your uncooked macaroni, soup, and milk to a baking dish and popping it in the oven. 

While this spicy mac and cheese is flavorful on its own, you can add in extra shredded cheese if you like it extra cheesy, or add in green chiles or extra jalapeños for even more heat. While there are plenty of canned soups that can seriously upgrade your mac and cheese, the Campbell's Spicy Nacho Cheese Soup deserves a special spot on your list.