Not Cream Of Mushroom: The Canned Soup That Turns Mashed Potatoes Into A Cajun Meal

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If you seek the textbook definition of "good problems to have," there's likely to be a color photograph of leftover mashed potatoes on the page. You can freeze mashed potatoes to prevent sogginess, or you can toss those spuds in the fridge for eating tomorrow. But we recently came across a recipe idea so delish, we might just be making our favorite mash for the express purpose of serving it up. Campbell's line of Chunky soups are, in our humble opinion, secret recipe super-weapons. Sure, they taste delicious when heated in a bowl, but we love to scoop them up on sale as the cornerstone of filling meals. When you combine a Cajun-flavored Chunky soup with a pile of mashed potatoes, something magic happens ... an alchemy that will make you feel like you've bought a ticket straight to the bayou.

What you need is a can of Campbell's Chunky gumbo. The company makes a regular-degular version; those seeking lower sodium can opt for Healthy Request Chicken & Sausage Gumbo Soup, and those who appreciate a kick can grab Spicy Chicken and Sausage Gumbo. For our purposes, any can of gumbo works. You're going to heat up some mashed 'taters, whether leftover or purpose-made, scoop a hearty pile in the middle of a bowl, and drown that pile in hot gumbo. The meaty soup/stew hybrid is usually enjoyed with rice, but you'll find that the potatoes make a heartier base and that the combination eats like a hug from Maw Maw. While this idea might sound outlandish — if definitely tasty — to the uninformed, know that there's actual precedent in Cajun country for dousing potatoes in gumbo, albeit in a different form.

Deep in Louisiana, some folks ladle gumbo atop a scoop of potato salad. The chill of the potato salad nearly melts into the steaming-hot gumbo and provides a silky backdrop to the chicken, sausage, crab, and okra that fill out a traditional recipe. On a Reddit thread, a poster went one step further and used their gumbo to smother mashed potatoes. "I figured if potato salad was OK then leftover mashed potatoes would be even better," the OP reasoned, before reporting: "And it was great!" The potato salad unique to Louisiana gumbo platters typically omits egg or relish, and is generally quite soft in consistency, so mashed potatoes are right there on the same end of the starchy spectrum.

There are a litany of mashed potato cooking mistakes, and we think that erring on the wrong flavor profile for your spuds might be a biggie when it comes to blanketing them in canned gumbo. Keep in mind that canned soup of any flavor is bound to be high in sodium, so you'll likely want to manage the salt in your potatoes. On the long list of ingredients to add to mashed potatoes, maybe opt for one or two with big, bold flavor: horseradish will cut through the richness of the gumbo's dark roux backbone while adding zest to the tubers. If you're a bit tamer in persuasion, maybe zing up your potatoes with some crème fraîche, or, at the very least, a generous dollop of sour cream. This is one moment where a chunkier mashed potato will really shine. Not that silky-smooth potatoes won't make for an enjoyable dish, but if those 'taters have some lumps that the soup can cling to? C'est bon!