Your Ticket To Upgraded Canned Soup Is Already In Your Fridge

Canned soup is affordable, convenient, easy to heat up, and often packed with the nutrients you need for a hearty, well-rounded meal. The only downside? It's not usually as flavorful as homemade soup. However, with one common condiment from the fridge, you can upgrade the flavor factor of your canned soup. Enter hot sauce.

Despite its name, hot sauce is more than just spicy. Although heat is the primary taste sensation, hot sauce is a multi-dimensional ingredient made with chili peppers frequently accented with vinegar, citrus juice, herbs, seasonings, and sometimes onion and garlic. Since hot sauce comes in so many flavor options, your choices for jazzing up canned soup are anything but limited. From ultra-spicy to slightly sweet or pleasantly tangy, picking a complementary hot sauce to elevate a canned soup will make it anything but boring. Pro tip: Take note of the salt content in your hot sauce, as canned soup is often already high in sodium.

As nostalgic and timeless as chicken noodle soup is, the canned variety tends to lack bravado. The spice and acidity of hot sauce can complement the umami-forward flavors of the chicken, giving it a more pronounced punch of savory satisfaction while adding depth to the earthy carrots and celery. Specifically, green Tabasco flaunts a relatively milder, garden-fresh taste with citrusy undertones that won't sear your tastebuds. The green chili-based hot sauce elevates the savory, comforting flavors of chicken noodle soup.

Canned Thai coconut soup is comforting, sweet, and tropical. The only thing missing is a dash of hot sauce. With a garlicky, sweet, and accessibly spicy taste and a thick and creamy consistency, sriracha brings fiery, umami-forward notes to canned coconut soups in need of some dimension. Plus, its texture blends seamlessly with the full-bodied mouthfeel of coconut milk or cream.

Straightforward and pleasantly spicy, Cholula enhances soup desperate for a touch of acidity. This classic Mexican hot sauce has very few ingredients, and ensures that a canned tortilla soup or pozole become as fiery and fresh-tasting as a scratch-made pot.

We'd be remiss to leave out heartier canned soups with creamy consistencies. Delicious and grounding as they are, lush-textured soups can benefit from an uplifting touch of heat to bring out the lighter notes.

Summery and refreshing, tomato basil is a classic soup flavor. But sometimes the canned version gets bogged down. Give your tomato basil soup a kiss of fire with chipotle hot sauce. Not only will it brighten up the taste with acidity, but it also introduces a subtle dimension of smokiness that makes this timeless soup more intriguing. 

Chunky, cheesy potato soup with bacon tastes like a loaded baked potato in a can, but the starch can make it a bit gluey. With vinegary, buttery accents and a laid-back heat level, Frank's Buffalo Sauce matches the richness of a spud soup while imbuing it with a spicy, zippy, yet mild-mannered fire. If you still find your canned potato soup too thick, dilute it with a little water.

Chowders are rich, decadent, and creamy to boot, making them a comfort classic. However, when enjoyed from a can, they're often dense, dumpy, and lack dimension. However, these bland flavors are no match for Tapatío hot sauce. Tangy, slightly sweet, and spice-forward, this Mexican-made hot sauce complements the lush, fatty flavors of chowder by brightening them with acidic heat.

Ultimately there's no right or wrong hot sauce to pair with your canned soups. Whether you enjoy them light and brothy or rich and creamy, experiment with your roster of hot sauces to determine which ones work best in your favorite tin of soup.