Give Your Scrambled Eggs The Flavor They Deserve With This Canned Ingredient

Scrambled eggs are one of the easiest and tastiest dishes to make — and more often than not by accident too, such as when trying your hand at fiddler recipes like carbonara or Hollandaise sauce. But while all that's needed is an egg and a skillet, it's one of those dishes that can easily be elevated from bog standard to elite with a few add-ons: the classics being butter, olive oil, milk, and cream, with various chef-anointed versions like Nigella Lawson's Mexican-inspired recipe. Out of all of these, canned soup is not quite what you might expect — but it can be just what your morning eggs needed.

The pantry staple is an old-time classic addition to scrambled eggs that makes for a surprisingly flavorful dish. Condensed canned soup specifically can provide a deeper taste and smoother, richer texture without needing to chop up some onions or add a million seasonings. The recipe dates back to the mid-twentieth century, known as "Campbelled Eggs," calling for the addition of one of the brand's well-known pre-made soups — specifically cream of chicken, cream of celery, cream of potato, cream of mushroom, and cream of clam chowder — to the eggs. The soups themselves are already salty, well-seasoned, and thick, giving you the perfect shortcut in a can.

As per the original Campbelled Egg recipe from 1962, the main way to add canned soup to scrambled eggs is to whisk the soup straight into the egg mix before cooking. The old-school ratio specifically calls for eight eggs to one can of soup, making a family-sized batch, but a smaller individual meal can be made with a tablespoon of the soup per egg. Canned soups tend to be quite salty, so however much you add also depends on how strong of a flavor you prefer. Indeed, it's best to taste the soup beforehand before adding any extra seasonings — once a cooked dish is over-salted, it's pretty hard to rectify. Which cream-based soup you pick also affects the profile of the dish. Pick mushroom for an earthy, umami depth; chicken for classic, savory richness; potato for velvety smoothness; celery for a lighter note; and clam chowder for an extra, seafood-tinged decadence.

The key to preparing the perfect scrambled eggs is to add a fat source — butter works pretty reliably here — and then, even more crucially, to cook on low heat. This allows you to get a luscious texture and avoiding a dry, overcooked mess. But the canned soups themselves do a lot of the heavy lifting here when it comes to ensuring your scrambled eggs — more often than not sad and overcooked — come out excellently. It might not be elegant or restaurant-quality, per se, but it's an easy hack to infuse a bit of life into your breakfast plate — and eggs aren't the only ingredient that work surprisingly well with our canned soups faves — try scalloped potatoes, pot pie, or even ramen.