Soup of the evening.

 

DF was an alchemist this morning. Pulling containers and bags of stuff from the fridge and freezer, he filled the crockpot with:

Two kinds of broth (chicken-vegetable and seasoned pinto bean)

The drippings from a chicken he’d cooked on the Weber

Leftover pork loin (bought deeply discounted, of course)

Chopped-up garlic scapes (from the 2022 garden)

Diced onions

A handful of red and yellow pepper chunks (from the produce section’s “ugly but still good” shelf and cut up to freeze)

Homegrown celery (frozen), carrots and potatoes

The slow cooker began to emit a marvelously savory aroma as the day wore on. A little after 5 p.m., DF sliced up some of his easy rustic bread and announced that dinner was served. Outside it was 13 degrees and snowy, but indoors it was all warmth, comfort, and food that was prepared and shared with love.

This is why we have a boiling bag. This is why we garden. This is why we buy flour by the 50-pound bag. This is why we check the manager’s special sections in both the meat and produce departments. It’s so we can have simple, delicious and very frugal meals.

And this is why I urge all of you to get into the boiling bag habit, and to save random broths like the liquid drained off those pinto beans or the chicken-y essence that dripped from the grilled birds. Not everyone can (or wants to) grow garlic, but anyone can be on the lookout for the best prices on onions, peppers and celery, and then chop and freeze those veggies. Carrots will keep for ages in the crisper, and potatoes are fairly hardy if kept in a cool, dark place.

Soup is a malleable meal

Having even some of these ingredients – especially the broths – can be enough for a tasty and nutritious meal. (A fast one, too, if you cook it on the stove instead of in the crockpot.)

No potatoes? Throw in a handful of macaroni or rice. Don’t have any cooked meat? Use canned chicken or turkey, or no meat at all; you could also add some canned beans* for a little more heft.

If you have only a small amount of broth frozen, toss in a can of tomatoes (or a can of broth) from the pantry. If you can’t garden, get in the habit of keeping frozen mixed vegetables on hand for added color as well as nutrition.

Experiment with spices. Squirt a little mustard vinegar or a dollop of sour cream into your bowl. If the soup’s thinner than you like, break up some crackers or spoon in some of the rice left over from last night’s supper.

While you eat, appreciate all the elements that came before: the small amount of leftover meat that’s now feeding more than one person, the broth made from boiling bag contents and the water saved from cooking vegetables. In our case we also celebrate the bread, which is made with some of the whey from my homemade yogurt.

On a chilly winter evening, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more satisfying combo than homemade soup and dizzyingly good homemade bread. And in a time of rampant inflation and personal financial uncertainty, it’s great fun to realize that this meal cost you almost nothing – but that it’s giving you just about everything.

Readers: Got any soup tactics to share?

*I also urge you cook up a mess of beans now and then, and store some (or all) in plastic bags stacked flat in the freezer. They’re a great addition to soup, can become a quick meal on their own as burritos or rice bowls, and make it easy to turn out a fast and frugal chili.

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21 thoughts on “Soup of the evening.”

  1. I love soup! We were raised on soup, making it the meal. I meet so many folks who think of it as an appetizer. Honestly in winter I don’t want to eat anything else.

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  2. We have four kids and I get a $5 rotisserie chicken at Costco almost every week. Those carcasses plus our scraps from the week make great soup regularly. Thank you for the boiling bag idea!

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    • I do the same thing – can get three meals out of that chicken most weeks with a family of four!- Soup is wonderful.
      Donna – I love your mixed broth idea!
      I like to add just a bit of finely chopped cabbage to my broths – it seems to add depth and richness.

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  3. Your meal sounded delicous! Especially the wonderful fresh bread! I work full time and until recently so did my husband. Demanding jobs that left us tired at the end of the day – which I know is the lot for most of us. I have a friend who comes home and cooks to unwind – it relaxes her. I envy her disposition, while we eat really well, I don’t enjoy cooking, nor does my husband, unless it is the week-end and I am rested. I used to cook a variety of fresh vegetables to accompany our healthy meals each week night and it was a lot of work. I suggested to my husband that I would cook two batches of soup and that those would replace the vegetable sides of our evening meal. I like thick pureed soups and he enjoys chunky ones. I eat a low FODMAP diet due to irritible bowel syndrome (a life changing diet for me) so my soup contains: leek greens, kale, broccoli, carrots, celery root and parsley. I sauté the leek greens in a mixture of olive oil and butter and the broth is just water and salt. Delicous. My husband soup contains the leek whites, carrots, celery root, celery, kale, broccoli, parsley, mushrooms and lentils all chopped up or diced using our kitchen aid food processor. I sauté his leeks and mushrooms in the same mixture of olive oil and butter and I add vegetable cocktail, water and salt for broth. We eat this soup about five times per week and we have not tired of it in the past six months. I make about a month worth of soup per batch and servings are keep in the freezer in one cup or two cup portions in mason jars. So healty and so simple.

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  4. I take a bunch of yellow onions and slice them up, melt a couple tablespoons of butter. Toss together and cook on low for 6-8 hours in the crockpot to make caramelized onions. You can add a touch of balsamic vinegar or Worcestershire sauce at the every end of cooking for added savor. I freeze a lot of the end product flat in bags for future dinners (steak and cheese sandwiches) but the bulk will then be used to make easy French onion soup. I salute finely diced carrot, celery and garlic in a pot, add the onions, beef broth and savory spices and cook for about 30-40 minutes. Toast a chunk of good bread, add shredded (Swiss for me) cheese on top and I am a happy girl.

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  5. Hi, here’s my soup story:
    My husband and I love turkey and every year around the holidays I’m on the hunt for cheap prices on frozen turkeys. I try to have 6 on hand and I make one every other month, even in the summer. I just made one in the end of October and last Wednesday I boiled the carcass, removed it and added left over celery from the turkey stuffing plus onion I keep in my frig plus some left over napa cabbage I chopped up, and a half bag of those frozen mixed vegetables. I usually thicken it slightly with some flour because the hubby doesn’t like a watery soup. I put 2 oversize quarts in the freezer and we have enjoyed several good soup meals since Wednesday, and there is still some left for our lunch today. I love hearing soup stories.

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  6. My instapot is a real game changer. I keep a boil bag of veggie ends and peels for making broth. Also a bag to freeze any bones from meals. Great bone broth in about 1.5 hours. Also fabulous for cooking rice or beans. Split pea soup, lentil soup etc. Stews are about 30 minutes.

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  7. Last night we had vegetable beef barley soup for our supper. A small amount of leftover cooked ground beef, most of a carton of beef broth, various frozen vegetables from bags that had only a little left in them, a little bit of chopped tomatoes and celery, a smidge of dried onion and garlic, and of course, the barley, which I had decided to cook ahead and not during the soup-making process. We both had more than one serving, and there’s enough left over for lunch. Making soup from leftovers is one of my favorite things to cook.

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  8. Reading all this reminds me of the book Stone Soup from my childhood 🥰
    Now, must plan to get a copy, to read this winter, to my granddaughters.

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    • I loved the book Stone Soup as a child although I have to admit I didn’t get the meaning of it until I was much older! I think I just loved how the townfolks’ heartedness and stinginess changed and they all ended up giving something toward the soup. Also I loved the foresight of the man who initially made the soup with just a stone. Great lesson in sharing and what can be accomplished when we all pitch in.

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      • I actually lived the stone soup life once upon a time. I worked with many other low-wage moms. We made barely enough money to feed our children. For lunch, each worker would bring one ingredient such as celery, carrot, onion-whatever we could come up with. We put all ingredients in the pot in the morning and let it cook until lunch time. That would be our lunch each day. We did this for several years and I never once heard any of the workers complain. It allowed us to be fed while still having enough money to feed our families. Working together is the best!

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  9. I had a great introduction to homemade soup as a child with my mother’s chicken or turkey rice soup and my grandmother’s vegetable soup. Both very different but both so delicious. Those two lived through the Depression and knew how to make food go a long way. My grandmother boiled beef bones and used stew meat in her vegetable soup which I did for years. Lately with the price of meat going so high I have been using black beans made in large quantities in the crockpot, divided into meal sized batches and frozen, for protein in the soup. I still use beef broth made from store brand bullion as a base. Basic vegetables are turnips, parsnips, carrots, onions, celery, a can of diced tomatoes and whatever leftover veggies are in the fridge or freezer. The turkey/chicken soup is basically bone broth from a leftover carcass, meat from the carcass, carrots, celery, onions and rice. Homemade soup is the best!

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  10. When I need/want soup as quickly as possible, I use a technique from Jacque Pepin’s Fast Food My Way. Get the water (or whatever liquids) heating up on the stove, and start assembling and cutting up your ingredients. Then add them according to how long they need to cook, i.e. longer cooking stuff first. Works for a simple lentil curry too.

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  11. My water aerobics instructor gave us a recipe for “diet soup.” I’ve long ago lost the official recipe, but I’ve used this cooking trick to serve up not only leftovers from my fridge but also limp veggies we got from the food bank back when I was unemployed. Basically it is meatless veggie soup, and the base of the soup is Bloody Mary Mix (a bottle of alcohol free base for the drink), which already has Worcestershire Sauce in it to add a little spicy kick. (If you don’t want it so peppery, just add a big can of tomato juice.) Chop up the limp veggies and toss in whatever you have from your fridge or canned goods collection. I also use the Tightwad Gazette trick of adding broccoli stalks, peeled and finely chopped up (I use a potato peeler and throw in the shavings, too). For protein, tofu takes on the flavors of the other stuff. I guess you could use hamburger crumbles as well, but we never did, and since it was diet soup, I usually didn’t bother with potatoes. But the ingredients are whatever you want/have, so experiment and have a blast. Slow cook or simmer ’til it’s ready. Served with a nice big bicuit or other bread, it makes a fine, filling meal.

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  12. Memories of my mom sitting at the kitchen table and feeling around in the pot of cooled broth, pulling out the bones. She would make a soup of some kind most fridays – I loved friday soup. night! She would butter bread and sprinkle with garlic salt and parmesan cheese and broil in the oven, and that would be supper. sometimes the ‘bread’ was leftover buns.
    One thing I do is soak either black or garbanzo or pinto beans overnight, then pressure can them with water and a bit of salt. Having my own home-canned beans reminds me of how wealthy I am. Yes, I COULD freeze them, but don’t have the freezer space, and and a very poor user of frozen stuff. Best to have a can i can just open and pour. I do the same with chicken and Turkey broth – in a jar, I will use.

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