The Ultimate Ranking Of Canned Cream Of Mushroom Soups

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It's a good idea to keep some cream of mushroom soup on hand in the kitchen. Whether you want to use it as a base for gravy, sauce, or casserole, cream of mushroom soup offers a shortcut for a wide variety of applications. Of course, you could always just slice up some fresh mushrooms and make some cream of mushroom from scratch, which can be deliciously rewarding — but that definitely takes more time and effort. There's no doubt that it's much easier to just pop open a can and start cooking.

The trouble is that there are a lot of canned cream of mushroom soup brands to pick from. While some brands are cheap, they can also be rather bland and shockingly high in sodium. On the other hand, soup recipes that use higher-quality ingredients can be expensive. With so many different types to pick from in the soup aisle, it can be difficult to know which ones are worth it.

Even if you tend to stick with the same brand of cream of mushroom soup, you might find yourself wondering what other brands are better or at least worth trying out. In our quest to make grocery shopping a little easier on you, we've taken it upon ourselves to shine a light on some popular soup brands to help steer you in the right direction. Here is the ultimate ranking of canned cream of mushroom soups, leading up to the best.

Publix has its own line of store-brand goods that offers everything from potato salad and rotisserie chicken to old-fashioned lemonade and yogurt. Among its many products, Publix also offers a variety of canned soups, including cream of mushroom soup. Most of the time, Publix's brand offers good-quality products for great value, but every once in a while, it misses the mark. Such is the case with the company's cream of mushroom soup.

Publix's cream of mushroom soup is mostly made with water, mushrooms, wheat flour, and soybean oil. The problem here isn't necessarily with the ingredients but with the overall flavor of this soup. Shoppers tend to notice a strange aftertaste with this soup. While the initial taste of the soup starts off just fine, the flavor quickly devolves and unpleasantly lingers. Publix's soup is cheaper than most other brands, so it may be a good choice for shoppers on a budget — but the soup itself will probably need some doctoring to be more palatable. Perhaps a touch of extra cream, garlic, and onion would improve this. But because we are judging these soups based on their taste right out of the can, we are ranking this one on the lower end.

Campbell's is one of the most familiar and recognizable soup brands in the country. Selling canned soups for more than a century, the company offers a wide variety of products, including chicken noodle soup and tomato soup. Campbell's also makes canned cream of mushroom soup that's mostly made with water, mushrooms, vegetable oil, modified cornstarch, wheat flour, salt, and cream. Campbell's cream of mushroom soup also contains monosodium glutamate (MSG).

Campbell's cream of mushroom soup has a decent mushroom flavor that's quickly overpowered by the taste of salt. The texture is creamy and there are little minced pieces of mushrooms scattered throughout the soup. This soup tastes best when the saltiness is tamed a bit with some added milk or cream, and then topped with some fresh sauteed mushrooms. But right out of the can, we feel this soup's saltiness is too strong, which makes sense: consuming a single 10.5-ounce can of this contains over 90% of the sodium recommended for an entire day. Still, Campbell's is so ubiquitous that it has a familiar taste that's undeniably comforting. Taking everything into consideration, Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup will suffice in a pinch, but there are definitely tastier canned options on the market.

Happy Belly is an Amazon food brand. It sells just about every type of food product imaginable, from trail mix and chocolate chip cookies to spices and coffee. Happy Belly also sells an assortment of canned goods like sliced peaches, garbanzo beans, and soups. Happy Belly's cream of mushroom soup is affordable and its ingredients mirror many of the other canned soups on this list. Mostly containing water, mushrooms, wheat flour, and soybean oil, this soup still somehow manages to taste better than Campbell's. With its cheaper price tag and richer flavor, it's no wonder that some shoppers are ditching Campbell's and opting for Happy Belly instead.

After more than 7,000 reviews from customers on Amazon, this canned mushroom soup has a nearly perfect rating. The general consensus is that this tastes just as good, if not better, than other leading brands. As a condensed soup, the texture on this is extremely thick — so thick, in fact, that customers say it won't even drip out of the can if it's turned upside down. Another good thing about this soup is that it features a peel back lid. This may seem like a trivial detail, but if you've ever found yourself without a can opener handy, you're well aware that a peel-off lid is a life-saver. While there is nothing necessarily wrong with this soup, there's also nothing really exceptional about it either, which is why it lands near the middle of our ranking.

Whole Foods is known for featuring natural and organic products. The company offers a higher caliber of freshness and quality that's typically harder to track down in other stores. Like many other grocery store chains, Whole Foods also produces its own line of goods, including cream of mushroom soup.

Whole Foods' cream of mushroom soup is mostly made with water, light cream, mushrooms, and onions. But the recipe also includes a few ingredients that nudge it ahead of the other soups on this list. The inclusion of sherry wine adds subtle notes of fruitiness and nuttiness to the flavor and aroma of this mushroom soup. There is also thyme in the recipe which imparts some earthy undertones. This cream of mushroom soup definitely offers a complexity of flavor that's hard to find in pre-prepared soups.

At the same time, like many products at Whole Foods, this soup is rather expensive. The cost of this is significantly higher than many other soups in our ranking. The richness of this soup pushes it ahead of many others on this list, but it's still hard to justify the price. If it were a little more affordable, this soup would place higher in our overall ranking of it.

Compared to a lot of other canned soups, Health Valley contains a lot less sodium. One full can of Health Valley's Organic Cream of Mushroom Soup has about 33% of the daily recommended amount of sodium, which is far more reasonable than some other brands in this ranking. Of course, less sodium translates into a soup that's much less salty, which is a good thing in our book. We'd much rather be in more control of how much salt we add to our soup, rather than letting the manufacturer add a lot of it during production.

Some of the ingredients in this soup include organic portobello mushrooms, organic soy sauce, organic mushroom powder, and organic carrot puree. Customers report that although this soup is a little pricey, it tastes like it's homemade. At the end of the day, isn't that what we're all hoping for when we buy canned soup? Health Valley holds true to the promise of its name with this soup, offering a flavorful product with organic ingredients that are also lower in sodium. Factoring all of that in, we place Health Valley's mushroom soup into top-tier territory.

Pacific Foods differentiates itself from many other brands by offering a wide range of plant-based soups and other plant-based products. The company offers everything from soups made with oat milk, organic cumin, and carrots to classic tomato soup and butternut squash soup. Pacific Foods also produces a few plant-based chilis, like White Bean Verde and Harvest Black Bean. Pacific Foods makes organic canned cream of mushroom soup with one of the shortest and simplest ingredient lists in our entire ranking.

Pacific Foods' organic canned cream of mushroom soup only contains water, mushrooms, cream, cornstarch, rice flour, sea salt, garlic powder, and onion powder. Aside from the water and sea salt, all of those ingredients are organic. The end result is a soup that tastes fresher and much less processed than many other brands, which is why this soup has landed so high on our list. If the soup had just a little more complexity — a touch of dried herbs or bigger chunks of mushrooms, perhaps — this may have ranked even higher. Still, the flavor of this is rich and tastes great for a canned soup.

Amy's was one of the first companies on the scene to mass-produce organic food products. In fact, as the Department of Agriculture developed its first standards for organic certification, it decided to get some direction from Amy's, since the company was so knowledgeable in the field. Not only are Amy's products healthier than a lot of other brands on the market, they're also tastier, too. The same certainly could be said for Amy's Mushroom Bisque, which takes the crown here for the best canned cream of mushroom soup.

This soup strikes the sweet spot when it comes to freshness, quality, and cost. Sure, it costs a little more than some of the brands on this list, but not so much that it's overpriced and vastly inaccessible. In this case, the extra couple of bucks it costs is worth every penny. Some customers have said, point-blank: "This is hands down the best canned soup I have ever tasted and I would also say the best mushroom soup period." Made with ingredients like wild porcini mushrooms, organic leeks, heavy cream, and cracked black pepper, this soup is buttery and infused with the rich taste of mushrooms we're hoping for in a canned mushroom soup. This soup doesn't just meet our expectations; it surpasses them in every way.