For Shortcut Pasta Sauce, Reach For A Cheesy Canned Soup

Using canned soups to make delicious pasta sauces is hardly a novel concept, but there are a couple of soups out there that rise head and shoulders above the rest. Cream of mushroom makes a creamy, earthy sauce, but if there's one thing that complements pasta like nothing else, it's cheese. That's why a can of condensed broccoli and cheese soup is the ingredient you've been sleeping on when making pasta sauce — it beats the pants off of jarred marinara or Alfredo any day.

In a perfect world, we'd all lovingly craft our sauces from scratch, but that's just not realistic for busy adults. Utilizing something you probably already have in your pantry, like canned broccoli and cheese soup, affords you the chance to make a savory, silky-smooth pasta dish when you're in a time crunch. To thin out your condensed soup, try pouring in some broth. Chicken broth is a great option, but veggie broth will keep the meal vegetarian-friendly. After that, the customization possibilities are endless — you're limited only by your imagination (and what's in the fridge) to build an amazing weeknight dinner.

The intuitive addition to a pasta dish built on canned broccoli and cheese soup is, of course, broccoli. Cut some florets into bite-sized pieces and cook them up before sprinkling them over your meal. Those steamer bags sold in the frozen vegetable section of the grocery store are a fabulous time-saving hack here. You can also add some julienned carrots and onions to play up and diversify the veggie angle of broccoli and cheese pasta.

To make your pasta more filling, why not add some protein? Leftover chicken or ham will bulk up the pasta nicely, but crumbled bacon is also a treat. And, naturally, you can't have broccoli and cheese pasta without piling on more cheddar. To make your dinner taste even more luxurious for just a bit more effort, use freshly shredded cheese instead of the kind you get in bags — it melts better and tastes sharper. You can also add some crunch with some toasted breadcrumbs right before serving.

One thing you shouldn't add to your broccoli and cheese pasta is salt. Canned soup is already high in sodium, and if you added the right amount of salt to your pasta water (about 2 tablespoons of salt per gallon of liquid), the meal will have plenty of salinity already.