cream of chicken soup
Also known as: Cream of Chicken & Herbs
A canned, condensed cream soup with a chicken-flavored white sauce base. It's used far more often as a shortcut binder and sauce base in casseroles than as an actual soup, added straight from the can without the dilution the label's soup directions call for.
Buying guidance
Check the label for sodium -- condensed soups are often a large share of a casserole's total salt, so a low-sodium version gives more control over final seasoning. Use it undiluted for a casserole; only add the water or milk the label suggests when actually making soup to eat as soup.
Substitutions
- A quick homemade white sauce -- butter, flour, milk or stock, salt, and a little poultry seasoning -- gives the same binding role with a cleaner, less salty flavor; taste and adjust salt, since it starts under-seasoned compared to the canned version.
- Cream of mushroom or cream of celery soup -- similar texture and binding power with a different background flavor.
Tips & common mistakes
It's already a thick, starch-based sauce, so it keeps thickening as a casserole bakes -- what looks like the right consistency going into the oven can turn pasty and dense by the time it comes out, so err toward looser than seems necessary when using it as a sauce base.
Storage
Once opened, move leftover soup to a covered container rather than leaving it in the can, and stir it well before reheating -- the starch and fat separate on standing and it can look curdled until remixed.