This Canned Soup Is Your One-Ingredient Lazy Upgrade For A Mind-Blowing Chili

Chili can be a great meal for when you're feeling a bit lazy and don't want to spend hours in the kitchen. It's flavorful, warm, and pairs with sides like rice, potatoes, and even certain sandwiches. However, if you want to take your chili over the top, adding a can of tomato soup can be your ace in the hole.

Tomato soup is versatile as a main dish or an ingredient in other recipes. Its rich taste and relatively thin texture can be cooked down into pure flavor. In a tomato-based chili, adding a can of tomato soup to the recipe can be the difference between something flat and something robust and extraordinary.

The brand of tomato soup you choose is up to you — of course, you're always better off with homemade, but we're aiming for simplicity here. When we ranked 13 brands of tomato soup, we deemed Trader Joe's organic version the best of the bunch, so if you're looking for something smooth yet healthy, this soup is the way to go. It's already got cheddar cheese in the soup itself, which will benefit your chili almost as much as adding cheese afterward.

Our recipe for quick and easy chili already lists a can of tomato soup as an ingredient, proving just how simple it is to incorporate. After you've browned the meat, simply add the soup with the rest of your ingredients, then cook it down to your desired consistency. While the recipe says to cook the mixture for 10 minutes, you may need more time if it's watery, or if you add more than our recommended 14.5 ounces of soup.

You can season the soup the same as you would any part of the chili (just remember to ditch the packaged seasoning blends). If your tomato soup of choice is on the basic side, you may want to add some salt and pepper to counter some of the tomatoes' acidity, or if it's already a bit salty, you can add some heavy cream to neutralize the flavor.

There are plenty of great chili recipes out there, so don't be afraid to experiment with different combinations and soup brands. Tomato soup won't be the right addition to every chili you make, but if it's a red or rusty color, odds are a little bit of this addition will go a long way. You can even add a can of soup to premade chili, like Hormel, to thin out the consistency and make it last longer. Play around and see what works best for even your laziest meals.