Whip Out The Immersion Blender And Canned Soup Will Taste Gourmet

Canned food often gets a bad rap — and frankly, it's not always deserved. Sure, your average can of soup isn't exactly going to earn a Michelin star any time soon. But sometimes a comforting bowl of cream of chicken or tomato is exactly what you need . It's easy, affordable, and with a little extra effort you can turn your struggle meal into something truly decadent.

The secret to making your canned soup taste gourmet is an immersion blender. You don't even need to add anything else — just plug in, give your soup a whizz, and just like that you'll have a luxuriously smooth texture that'll give even restaurant offerings a run for their money. 

The trick works especially well with chunky vegetable soups — allowing all those texture-heavy ingredients to meld together can turns it into something greater than the sum of its parts. Getting the immersion blender involved won't just give you a gourmet-level texture — it's also a super simple way to hack your canned soup for extra flavor!

People often talk about "letting wine breathe" by decanting it (or even just leaving your bottle open for a few minutes). Doing so can bring out flavors that would otherwise remain dormant in the container, and makes for a much deeper profile. Believe it or not, the same logic applies to your soup — and that immersion blender is the key.

It's all due to a process called aeration — and it's more commonplace in the kitchen than you might think. When baking, for example, aerating flour is a great trick to improve the texture and overall finish of cakes and breads. You see it in other dishes, too: When top restaurants offer mousses or foams it's not just a visual gimmick; the more air that passes over our mouths while we eat, the more the flavors of what we're eating open up, allowing us to catch the subtle notes that would escape our palates otherwise. 

When it comes to our canned soup, the immersion blender whips it up — injecting it with air and facilitating that process of aeration, giving it an extra boost.

Adding just a few simple ingredients before blending can take your canned soup to the next level, too. Take a classic cream of mushroom, for example. Incorporate some powdered dry mushrooms for a big umami boost, adding earthiness and richness to the bowl. You could also take a cue from the Scandinavians and make a creamy chanterelle soup – just grab some mushrooms from your nearest speciality grocer (or forage for them yourself), fry them, and drop them in the bowl to add a bit of bite.

With almost any canned soup, bringing some freshness in is another easy and delicious upgrade. You could add some fresh herbs like dill or parsley and blend them into a hearty vegetable number, or blitz your cream of tomato soup with some basil for an Italian twist. You could add some chili, coconut, and red curry paste for a Thai-inspired pumpkin soup. Even something as simple as a squeeze of lemon before blending things together can add some acidity and brighten it up, giving new life to a reliable old staple.