The Canned Cream Of Mushroom Soup Brand That's Bland Beyond Belief

A good store-bought cream of mushroom soup is one that should taste delicious in a casserole — or a bowl. But there's one brand of cream of mushroom soup out there you need to avoid entirely if you want to bring flavor to either, and that's Dr. Kellyann's Creamy Mushroom Soup. In Food Republic's ranking of best to worst cream of mushroom soups, taste tester Lauren Blair found this soup a can of nothing but "herbed water" with no mushrooms in sight, suggesting readers might want to use this not so much for eating but as a paperweight. But with this priced anywhere from $4.99 to $8.29 at some retailers, it had better be one attractive paperweight, right?

Even dairy-free soups can bring the creamy, so one priced this high should give us not just a creamy but a dreamy base that rivals a homemade vegan mushroom soup — no matter what it's free from. Dr. Kellyann could have at least tried to capture some essence of a cream soup through use of plant-based milk but — didn't. For the price, you'd expect something that rivals what you get in a restaurant — certainly a touch of creaminess as that's in the name itself. It's already watery, and with the instructions to add more water (or optional milk-slash-alternative, which it should already include as a "creamy" soup), the broth becomes much too thin. It's easy to see why this brand ranked last on Bair's list.

Cream of mushroom soup is called America's béchamel for a reason. We count on it to bring a savory, creamy, umami base to our favorite casseroles from green bean to an upscale tuna casserole. If you want a cream of mushroom soup that has this quality, what you have to look for is a soup that has both cream and mushrooms listed very high on that ingredient list. 

The stunner in terms of packing big hunks of savory mushrooms into that jar of soup is Zoup!'s Portabella Mushroom Bisque. This restaurant-quality soup full of savory portabello and white mushrooms suspended in a velvety cream velouté-like base is so satisfyingly chunky that it eats more like a chowder than a soup — which explains its label as a bisque. Portabella mushrooms are listed second on that ingredient list, by the way, so Zoup! promises a lot of portabella mushrooms in that jar — and they deliver. Third on the list? Cream — which you can taste and enjoy its density — gives it a craveable mouthfeel.

Another good choice is Amy's Mushroom Bisque with Porcini. This velvety mushroom-laden soup is packed with hearty ingredients like organic mushrooms, wild porcini mushrooms, organic cream, celery, butter, and Arborio rice. We find it to be a satisfying option with plenty of texture — and nearly 1,000 reviewers who gave it five stars on Amazon agree.