Add Condiments To Your Tomato Soup For An Easy Flavor Boost

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Canned tomato soup is comforting, nostalgic, cost-effective, and easy to prepare. In short, there's a lot to love about it. As is the case with almost all ready-made foods, however, there are hacks that can dramatically improve your basic can of tomato soup. Upgrading your soupy supper is as simple as turning to your pantry for condiments you already have. Canned soup on its own is somehow simultaneously salty and yet also lacking character. You'd be amazed how far some easy add-ins can go towards turning tomato soup indulgent and craveable by adding what is lacking, namely fat, acid, heat, and punchy flavors.

Before you buy any canned soup, you should know that they aren't all made equal. Premium brands will contain fewer fillers and rely less on a boatload of sugar and salt to enhance taste. For better tomato soup, skip the bargain brands and go for something with better reviews, like Pacific Foods' creamy tomato soup, which is organic, satisfying, and comes in a carton big enough to feed you and a couple of loved ones. From there, grab your favorite condiments like sour cream, lemon juice, olive oil, and even butter, because we are going on a journey to sensational soup!

Before you dive into your condiment stash, try to envision the soup you want to eat and go from there in terms of enhancing texture and taste. Do you like a velvety, unctuous slurp? Go for sour cream, Greek yogurt, or butter to make your tomato soup creamier and richer with a swirl of luscious fattiness. Want to make the sweetness and acidity of the tomato pop? Drizzle on some lemon juice. Of course, you can't go wrong with a few splashes of your favorite hot sauce to enliven the mixture. 

For further enhancement, dive into your spice drawer for the red pepper flakes, dried basil and oregano, or Parmesan cheese. Or experiment with just a dash of cinnamon or nutmeg. These warming spices are often used with tomato-based dishes in Mediterranean cuisine, after all. 

This is all to say nothing of oil-based condiments like pesto, chili crisp, or plain old EVOO. If you feel ambitious, you can upgrade your store-bought tomato soup with infused oil of your choosing in a process that only takes about five extra minutes on the stove. Your soup will feel downright luxurious if you splurge a little bit on the olive oil, like this bottle of Atlas cold-press EVOO from Morocco.