We taste-tested nine brands of canned chicken noodle soup you’re likely to find at your local supermarket. To find the very best one, we sampled each without knowing which was which. Our winner is Stop & Shop Homestyle Chicken Noodle Soup.
When I feel a cold coming on, the first thing I do—besides hydrate—is make a big pot of chicken noodle soup. I take the time to gently simmer a whole chicken until it’s just cooked through, then shred it into an aromatic broth with carrots, celery, garlic, and onion. As lovely as homemade chicken soup is, sometimes making it isn’t feasible, especially when you’re feeling ill or short on time. That’s when the canned stuff comes in handy: It lasts for years in the pantry, and when you need it, you simply have to heat it up. But which brand is worth buying?
To find the best canned chicken noodle soup, our editors heated them according to package directions and sampled them in random order, without knowing which was which. We then tabulated the results and crowned an overall winner, along with one other runner-up.
Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez
The Criteria
Canned chicken noodle soup should taste like chicken: It should be made with a fragrant broth, and have tender pieces of chicken and vegetables. The broth should have good body and be well seasoned, but not excessively salty. Though herbs—such as parsley, rosemary, and thyme—are welcome, they should not be the predominant flavor of the soup. The noodles should be tender but not mushy, and the vegetables should be soft but still have some bite. We don’t expect canned soup to taste homemade, but it should be palatable and good enough that you’d eat it in a pinch.
Overall Winner
Stop & Shop Homestyle Chicken Noodle Soup
“Mild, comforting broth with gentle chicken flavor,” our associate editor, Laila, wrote. “Chicken tastes close to freshly cooked. Seasoning is subtle.” Our editorial director, Daniel, liked that the big chunks of chicken weren’t too dry, and our visuals editor, Jessie, appreciated the tender carrots. Though Laila thought the noodles had “substantial bite,” our associate editorial director, Megan, and our associate visuals director, Amanda, found them much too soft. Still, this option—what Megan calls “relatively inoffensive” and Daniel describes as “totally edible”—was the best of the bunch.
Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez
Runner-Up
Trader Joe’s Chicken Noodle Soup
Almost every taster made a note of how carrot-forward this soup was—which might not be a bad thing, depending on how you like your chicken noodle soup. “It’s inoffensive and not too salty, which I prefer,” Megan noted. “Not bad, but the chicken isn’t very tender,” Jessie wrote. “Mushy noodles, otherwise fine,” Daniel concluded.
The Contenders
- Annie’s Organic Chicken Noodle Soup
- Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup
- Campbell’s Chunky Chicken Noodle
- Pacific Chicken Noodle Soup
- Progresso Chicken Noodle Soup
- Shoprite Bowl & Basket Chicken Noodle Soup
- Stop & Shop Homestyle Chicken Noodle Soup
- Trader Joe’s Chicken Noodle Soup
- Wegmans Organic Chicken Noodle
Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez
Key Takeaways and Conclusion
Many canned chicken noodle soups are made with chicken broth or stock, and some are made with water. All contain cooked chicken, aromatics—including carrots, celery, and some fresh or dried form of onion and garlic—and, of course, pasta. Almost all the brands we sampled contain thickeners, stabilizers, and preservatives, such as maltodextrin and sodium phosphate. To reduce the total sodium content, some brands use potassium chloride—a salt substitute—in addition to salt. Soy protein isolate and soy protein concentrate are also common ingredients; they are often used to improve the texture and mouthfeel of canned foods.
Both our winner (Stop and Shop Homestyle Chicken Noodle Soup) and runner-up (Trader Joe’s Chicken Noodle Soup) are made with chicken broth and contain white meat and chicken fat. Our runner-up contains carrot oil, which explains why so many of our tasters thought it was so carrot-forward. Our editors generally preferred soups made with broth or stock; they found soups made with water bland. On the other spectrum, some of the soups were far too salty for our editors. We all agreed that canned chicken noodle soup is handy in a pinch, and would reach for our winner or runner-up for our own pantries.
Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez
Our Testing Methodology
All taste tests are conducted with brands completely hidden and without discussion. Tasters taste samples in random order. For example, taster A may taste sample one first, while taster B will taste sample six first. This is to prevent palate fatigue from unfairly giving any one sample an advantage. Tasters are asked to fill out tasting sheets, ranking the samples according to various criteria. All data is tabulated, and results are calculated with no editorial input to provide the most impartial representation of actual results possible.
