Make An Instant Cajun-Style Meal Under $5 Using This Canned Soup As Pasta Sauce

With high grocery prices and long work days, easy, affordable meals feel more necessary than ever. It doesn't take much to throw together some pasta and store-bought sauce, but if you're looking for a rich, savory pasta dish with plenty of ingredients yet no chopping or dicing, swap the jarred sauce for canned gumbo.

Canned soup makes a surprisingly tasty pasta sauce. Gumbo is a soup-like dish that's popular in Cajun cooking, but it's thicker and usually made with a roux to create more of a rich stew consistency. There are a handful of canned gumbo brands on the market, from Amy's vegetable gumbo to Campbell's Chunky chicken and sausage gumbo. While prices vary, these soups are inexpensive enough to be paired with a box of pasta and still cost less than $5 total. 

To prepare a basic version of the dish, cook the pasta according to its package instructions, and heat the soup in a separate pot while the pasta cooks. Reserve a little pasta water before draining, then add the pasta water and pasta to the soup. The starchy water helps the sauce (or in this case, gumbo) stick to the pasta better. If desired, you can reduce the soup with the lid off while the pasta cooks if you want a thicker consistency.

To keep this meal inexpensive, you probably want to only add pantry staples to the meal — those items you have on hand in the kitchen at all times. It doesn't hurt to add some seasonings; you can easily add a little garlic or onion powder to give the gumbo an even more robust flavor. For some heat, black pepper, crushed red pepper, or spicy Cajun seasoning blend are great choices. 

If you want a creamier soup and happen to have some cream in the refrigerator, go ahead and add a splash while the soup heats up. This also works with other dairy ingredients, such as a spoonful of cream cheese or a scoop of sour cream. To quickly make the gumbo extra thick, you can make a cornstarch slurry with a 16:1 ratio of water to cornstarch (or just a pinch of cornstarch per tablespoon of water), then add the slurry to the soup. 

This pasta dish is an easy way to use up that leftover bag of frozen vegetables, too, such as a bag of frozen onions and peppers. While it's good enough to eat without the extras, gumbo pasta can benefit from a few different flavor hacks — like finishing it with a sprinkle of fresh parsley or thyme.