Shrimp Is The Secret To Turning This Store-Bought Soup Into A Hearty Meal

When we think of store-bought soup, it's often the cheap canned kind that comes to mind. Most supermarkets, however, offer somewhat more upmarket refrigerated soups, including the luxurious-sounding lobster bisque. As lobster is ridiculously expensive, however, you may not find as much meat in a store-bought bisque as you would like. But, even if you've blown half your grocery budget on buying a store-bought bisque, you can still turn it into a hearty meal thanks to a cheaper crustacean. Adding shrimp to your soup will not only bulk it up but add extra protein as well.

Since all you're doing is adding a single ingredient to your premade bisque, now's your chance to use precooked or even canned shrimp. Both of these ingredients can simply be chopped up then heated in the soup until they warm up. If your shrimp needs pre-cooking, though, you can quickly sauté it or, if you can't be bothered to thaw it, give it a few minutes under the broiler. (This is the fastest and easiest way to cook frozen shrimp.) Add a chunk of bread or a roll — maybe a Cheddar Bay biscuit if the frozen kind are available where you shop – and your store-bought soup will be transformed into a meal that'll actually fill you up.

Shrimp may be the best way to beef up lobster bisque — much better than actual beef, since that might be a bit weird — but that doesn't mean there aren't other soups that could benefit from this addition. One pretty obvious candidate is Campbell's Condensed Cream of Shrimp Soup, also known (by me, at least) as the poor person's shrimp bisque. While it does have a few tiny flecks of what I assume is shrimp meat in it, this soup would be immensely improved by you dumping in a can of tiny cocktail shrimp. If you're into retro recipes, you can add some peas as well, then serve the soup over rice and call it shrimp wiggle (a decidedly retro dish).

If you add shrimp to canned corn chowder you suddenly have tasty seafood chowder, while stirring shrimp into black bean soup along with a squeeze of lime juice and a pinch of dried chiles will give you a Southwestern-style meal. You could even add shrimp to tomato soup along with some Cajun or Creole seasoning. With the addition of a starchy side such as cornbread or biscuits, as well as a green salad to make things a bit healthier, any of these shrimp-enhanced soups will make for a satisfying meal.