14 Canned Ingredients That Will Take Your Chicken To The Next Level

Chicken usually needs a little help to taste good. While the meat has lots of natural flavor, unless it's seasoned correctly or combined with other ingredients, it can be incredibly boring. However, these extra ingredients don't have to be fresh — even if your chicken is. Your pantry is a treasure trove of items that pair well with chicken, and can be used in combination with the protein to make a delicious, easy, and super-affordable dish.

Canned foods can work in dozens of different and unexpected ways with chicken, from forming the base of a stew or curry to acting as a marinade. Combining chicken with cream of chicken soup, for example, can make your fried chicken juicy, flavorful, and easy to dredge in flour. Staples like canned chipotle peppers can transform chicken from a gentle-tasting meat into something bursting with flavor and ready to be stuffed into tacos. You shouldn't forget about the more basic canned ingredients either. Everyday items like canned tomatoes and beans build chicken dishes that are fully-rounded crowd pleasers. If you're desperate for inspiration for your next chicken-based meal, look no further than your cupboard.

Virtually everyone has their own secret ingredient for fried chicken, and to be quite honest, we just don't have time to try them all — not when we know there's one canned ingredient out there that makes the juiciest fried chicken possible. Cream of chicken soup gives fried chicken a huge amount of flavor instantly, coating thighs and drumsticks in a salty, smooth sauce that both seasons and moistens the meat. Instead of making a batter, you just have to pour a can of chicken soup into a bowl, dip your chicken in, and then pop it in the flour.

The soup helps flour adhere to the chicken easily, and its consistent texture means you don't have to contend with any stringy egg bits that weren't whisked properly. You can also marinate your chicken in the cream of chicken soup for a while to ensure that it soaks up as much flavor as possible. If you're using cream of chicken soup, just make sure to balance things out by not adding too much salt to your flour mixture. Because cream of chicken soup can be pretty salty, you don't want to tip things overboard by over-salting things elsewhere.

Chicken goes well with most types of canned beans, but white beans are one of our favorites to use with the meat. White beans like cannellini or butter beans generally have a milder flavor and a soft texture, but retain an undercurrent of nuttiness and earthiness. It's this combination of flavors and textures that makes them so well-suited to chicken. Together, they create a delicate, yet multifaceted flavor experience.

One of the other bonuses of using these two gentle-tasting ingredients together is that they're wonderfully open to a bit of spice. We love combining them in a white chicken chili. Spices like cumin, paprika, and cinnamon bring perfumed pepperiness to the dish, while minced jalapeño and crushed red pepper flakes give a fair amount of heat. Pearl onions and garlic add a fragrant aroma and deepen the chili's flavors. Importantly, everything manages to stay light, thanks to the combined gentleness of the beans and chicken, even as these spicy notes are threaded through the dish.

It's hardly revolutionary to say that canned tomatoes go with chicken — they go with virtually everything, after all — but it's still worth pointing out how much they can improve the protein. Canned tomatoes supply a huge amount of flavor to chicken, and notably fill out its umami dimensions. Because tomatoes (and canned tomatoes) are high in glutamates, they make chicken taste more savory, while their acidic and sweet notes add further complexity to the meat. They also add some all-important moisture, are easy to cook, and cost next to nothing. In short? Canned tomatoes rock.

The ways you can use them with chicken are virtually endless, too. You can use canned tomatoes as a base for a pasta sauce, which you can then tumble chicken chunks into. They can also act as the starting point for chicken curries and stews. Our favorite combo of canned tomatoes and chicken, though, is in a classic chicken parmesan. By combining a sauce made of canned tomatoes with a crispy fried chicken breast, you get the ultimate combination of crunchy and smooth, salty and sweet, and dry and moist. Honestly, it's the bomb.

Whether you're sautéeing, air frying, or grilling your chicken, it's usually gonna taste pretty good. If you're baking it, though, it can be a tiny bit bland. Luckily, there are certain canned ingredients that can amp up its flavor in a significant way. Canned artichoke hearts are one of our favorites to use with baked chicken, thanks to their nutty, earthy, slightly tangy flavor. This nuttiness pairs excellently with chicken, filling out its flavor dimensions without having to add copious amounts of salt or fat. When baked, artichoke hearts cook down and turn squidgy, which works in excellent contrast to firmer chicken meat.

Other types of canned vegetables can also work excellently with baked chicken, and deliver a similar flavor. Canned hearts of palm are close to artichoke hearts in flavor and texture, and look almost identical to artichokes when coated in herbs and spices and cooked enough. Canned white asparagus also pairs well with baked chicken; its gently earthy taste bolsters the meat without overtaking it. When using any of these ingredients, just make sure you're seasoning them well and cooking them in enough fat so that they turn brown and juicy instead of burning.

Beer and chicken is a match made in heaven. But most of the time, people enjoy this pairing by sinking a cold one with their fried chicken leg. That's delicious, but you should also consider cooking the two together. Using beer as a marinade for chicken is a quick way to give it extra flavor and improve its texture. Beer has a gentle tenderizing effect on chicken, and gives it a malty, slightly bitter flavor that goes with a surprisingly wide array of herbs and spices. The darker the beer you use, the more pronounced its flavor will be.

To marinate chicken in beer, simply pop the meat into a combination of beer and your favorite seasonings, and leave it to chill for about six hours. From there, you can grill, fry, or bake it, and it'll come out juicy and flavorful. Beer also makes the perfect addition to batter for fried chicken, too. Its combination of ingredients produces a light, crispy batter that's full of bubbles, which can stop your fried chicken from ending up too dense, gluey, or floury.

Canned cream-style corn and chicken may not seem like a match made in heaven. That's only if you don't know how to use the two together, though. Canned cream-style corn has a sweet-salty flavor to it that adds an impressive amount of depth to chicken without overtaking its natural meaty flavors. When the two are combined, chicken somehow tastes elevated, but isn't completely side-swept by the corn's flavor.

Finding a way to mix the two can be tricky, though — but not if you master chicken corn chowder. Using canned cream-style corn as the base for this chowder gives it a lush sweetness that holds the chicken up. Chicken broth bolsters the chicken flavor even more (and adds all-important moisture) while chorizo gives the chowder delicious spice and extra meatiness. It's not just cream-style corn that goes well with chicken, either. Regular canned corn adds a gentle, seamless sweetness to chicken, and can be used in dozens of different ways, from a topping for chicken tacos to a chicken and corn stir fry.

Coconut milk is one of those ingredients that goes with everything. Whether you're using it in a sweet, savory, vegetarian, or meat-based meal, it reliably adds creaminess and a gentle nutty taste to anything it's mixed in with. In our opinion, though, it works best with chicken. When coconut milk is paired with chicken, its silky texture moistens even the driest chicken breast, while its rich flavor helps to deepen the normally mild meat's notes. In short, it transforms chicken from good to great.

You can use coconut milk in pretty much any recipe that asks for cream, but we prefer to use it in chicken-based dishes it's been designed for. A simple Thai green chicken curry is a great place to start. The coconut milk keeps the chicken breast tender, even while it's simmering in the spicy broth. It also helps to temper the fierceness of the green curry paste (don't be fooled by its color — some of these blends can be astonishingly spicy) and smooth out the sharp flavors of the garlic, ginger, and fish sauce in the gravy.

Canned vegetables and chicken are hardly an exciting combo on paper. By pairing the two carefully, though, you can make a simple and effective meal that's nutritious and incredibly tasty. Plus, canned vegetables like peas and carrots make dishes like chicken noodle soup more interesting and more time-effective. Instead of having to wait for your veggies to cook, you can just tip them in, giving your soup immediate flavor.

You can also use canned vegetables in dishes like chicken stir-fries to dispense with a lot of your prep time. No need to chop your veggies beforehand — simply throw them in to bulk out your dish and give the chicken a bed of vegetal flavors to sit upon. Canned carrots, edamame, and water chestnuts go perfectly in a chicken stir-fry, and each of them gives a different flavor dimension that rounds out the meal. When using canned vegetables, bear in mind that they're already cooked, so you don't want to add them too early. Otherwise, they'll just simmer down into a mushy, salty mess. ‌

We're willing to bet that when chicken enchilada night rolls around, you don't have to badger your kids to get them to the dinner table. This dish is a favorite on weeknight rotations — but there's no denying that it can take a while to make. If you're making your own enchilada sauce, it can double the prep time of your meal. The added time it takes to dice green chiles makes things even longer.

That's why we like to rely on canned goods for our chicken chile enchiladas. Just grab your favorite enchilada sauce and canned chiles, and cook them with your chicken and other ingredients in a slow cooker or Instant Pot. These two ingredients add a huge amount of depth to the chicken, with the enchilada sauce adding deep spice and salty tang and the chiles bringing the heat. Both of them stop your chicken from becoming insufferably bland.

Once everything's cooked, load your tortillas with the mixture, line them up in a dish, and top them with the leftover enchilada sauce. Throw some cheese on top and bake, and you'll be rewarded with a flavorful dish that tastes like it took hours to make. Don't worry, we'll keep your secret.

So many ingredients that are added to chicken focus on adding spice or herbal flavors. Sharp, tangy notes are often an afterthought — but make them the star of the show, and you'll be rewarded. Olives and capers go incredibly well with chicken, and give it a flavor dimension that it otherwise totally lacks. The tangy, briny, vinegary notes of these plants create an iron-like taste that makes the meat taste way meatier. This meatiness is reinforced by the natural umami levels of both ingredients, which give the chicken extra savoriness.

Using these canned ingredients in combination with chicken is delightfully simple: You can just tip them into whatever chicken dish you're making. They tend to hold up super well to heat, remaining firm even if they're boiled or baked. However, if you want to highlight their flavors most effectively, using chopped olives and capers as the main component in a baked chicken dish is your best bet. Combine black and green olives and capers in a baking dish, throw in some onion, garlic and a little mustard, and layer on some chicken. Once it's all baked, the olives and capers' flavors will have fully combined with the chicken, making it taste seriously intense.

Shredded chicken can be a great addition to tacos and burritos — if you can get it right, that is. All too often, shredded chicken is dry and tasteless, lacking the proper seasoning to give it an impact in your favorite meals. That's where canned chipotle peppers come in. These peppers give chicken a huge amount of smoky, sweet, spicy flavor, amping up its complexity. At the same time, the adobo sauce that they come packed in gives the chicken moisture.

It's worth mentioning that chipotle peppers can be seriously fierce. Just combining the two ingredients will leave you with a dish that's not just super spicy, but potentially unbalanced. If you're making shredded chicken, make sure you're cutting your chipotle peppers with some chicken broth and sprinkling in some taco seasoning to round things out. Canned chipotle peppers aren't only suitable for shredded chicken either. You can use them as part of a marinade for baked chicken, or mix them into some mayo to spread on a chicken sandwich. However you're using them, their intense smokiness and spice gives your meat a real kick.

Chicken and fish are generally served separately, with each protein serving as the star of its respective dish. However, one fish goes with chicken way better than you think. Anchovies provide an incredible amount of flavor to chicken dishes, adding pure meatiness and punch to your poultry. They don't taste fishy, either: Used sparingly and incorporated properly, they just flood your dish with impactful umami notes.

Anchovies can be used in loads of different ways with chicken, too. You can snip anchovy filets into a chicken stew or chili, where they'll dissolve and diffuse their flavors. These tiny fish can also add loads of extra flavor to a pan sauce made with other strong-tasting ingredients like garlic and capers, which you can then pour over grilled chicken thighs. However, our favorite use is on roast chicken. By crowning your chicken with a compound butter made with anchovies and garlic and roasting it, you give the bird spectacularly intense flavor as it melts into the meat and crisps the skin.

If you've never used evaporated milk in savory dishes, now's the time to start. Canned evaporated milk serves as an excellent substitute for cream in loads of chicken dishes. Unlike cream, though, it has a slightly lighter composition and flavor, meaning that it gently uplifts your chicken's flavors instead of becoming the dominant note. Because evaporated milk has a fairly low sugar content, it doesn't make your meat too sweet either. In fact, it can slot into dishes based around virtually any flavor profile. It also has a way longer shelf life than cream, thanks to being canned, so it's great to keep around for when you want a creamy dish pronto.

To use evaporated milk, simply substitute it for cream in any recipe that calls for it. You can heat evaporated milk without any risk of it curdling, and when you do, it'll develop a slightly darker color and more intense flavor. Slow-cooker chicken dishes, chicken curries, chicken stroganoff, chicken a la king, and creamy chicken pastas all work well with evaporated milk; it gives sauces body without weighing them down.

Chicken and roast potatoes is a combo that continues to stand the test of time. However, there's no getting around the fact that this duo takes a while to cook. As well as cooking your chicken, you have to wash and peel your potatoes, chop them up, and cook them — which, if you're parboiling them first, can be laborious and lengthy.

That's why you should ditch the fresh potatoes and go for canned instead. Canned potatoes are virtually identical to the fresh kind once they're roasted, and they give your chicken that same pillowy, neutral flavor base and carb-y bite. Canned potatoes also have the added benefit of being packed in brine, which pre-seasons them. While you can tuck canned potatoes around a roast chicken while it gently browns, you can also sub them into a loaded tots dish with shredded chicken. Alternatively, pop them into a chicken curry to stretch it out further. The mild nuttiness of the potatoes will balance out the spicy notes of the gravy.