SubscribeHow To: Make Your Own Pre-packaged Soups
With the current high cost of groceries, everybody is looking for ways to cut costs, but still maintain the same high level of quality of their food and nutritional content for their meals.
Since time is a valuable commodity as well, a way to save money and time is to purchase your food items in bulk.
But how do you make your own prepackaged meals and soups?
It's simple.
Make a "Soup in a Bag," add its fresh ingredients, and you're good to go.
So what is "Soup in a Bag?"
Simply put, it's all the ingredients you need for a big (or small) pot of soup.
Although summer is right around the corner, you might not want to have the stove on for hours and hours. For this reason, I've included some soup recipes that won't take you too long to cook.
The best part of this is that you don't have to dig in all of your cabinets the next time you want to make soup; you'll be able to just pull out a proportioned bag, add a few fresh vegetables, and you're good to go.
How to make Soup in a Bag
- First download the recipe cards (from Iowa Avenue); I've attached some cool recipes cards for each of these recipes. They are 100% printable and ready to go.
- Next, purchase all of the required dry ingredients.
- Make sure to properly measure the amount of necessary ingredients and then put them into the proper bags. You'll have a Lentil Soup Bag, a Split Pea Soup bag, and a Quinoa Soup bag. Or you can make multiple bags of each and then store it to have on hand.
- Each of the attached recipes has a similar vegetable base of onion, celery, and carrots, all of which are cooked with 1 or 2 tablespoons of vegetable or canola oil. For the most part, these basic ingredients are in your house all the time.
- Purchase the additional ingredients, such as crushed tomatoes, frozen spinach, potatoes, or cabbage, and have them in your freezer or pantry.
Lastly, to jazz up these recipes, you're welcome to add more spices and fresh herbs like dill, cilantro, or thyme.
What type of time and money saving ideas do you use for your meals? Do you work to ensure that you have the proper nutrition and ingredients even with your busy schedule?
About the author: Lisa Newton is founder of IowaAvenue.com and HealthyLifestyleBloggers.
Great idea! I'm going to give this a try soon.
ReplyI have a recipe book that does something similar with muffins & breads & I love having most of the ingredients made up (and frozen) ahead of time. I especially like the amount of freedom you have with this recipe to add whatever "extras" you might want.
ReplyThis is an interesting idea. Starting at the beginning of this last winter I really started getting into eating a lot of different soups. Unfortunately, I only know how to make 2 varieties of chicken noodle. I'll have to print and try some of these. Thanks for the idea.
ReplyI love this idea, but I wish the recipe was for more than 1 serving so that I could make multiple baggies of soup and freeze them. That way I would have no reason to not have lunch since I could pull it from the freeze and have it thawed by lunch.
ReplySoup in a bag is a great idea. I find soup in general is a very easy way to get in a bunch of servings of vegetables without even knowing it.
ReplyDo you know anything about freezing soups? Does it affect the nutritional content?
ReplyFreezing should preserve, not affect nutritional content. If you buy frozen veg and fruits they say (whoever they are, the nutrition police I guess) that they have more nutrients than the "fresh" veg and fruit that have to be stored and transported a long way. It's because they freeze things now so quickly after they are picked, I believe.
ReplyThanks for the comments everyone, and I'm happy you like the idea. It has worked well for me. I love the idea of having a homemade mix ready when I need it.
ReplyI love soup and have been doing a similar thing for the last few months. :)
ReplyGreat Idea! Especially since studies show that if you'll eat less if you begin your meal with soup.
ReplyThis is a good idea...I might have to give this a try! When I want soup, I do take the time to cut up all the veggies and stuff, but I save time by making a humongous batch and freezing it in individual containers so I can eat for weeks. I also save time in the kitchen by cutting up onions all at once at the beginning of the week and keeping them in a tupperware bin in the fridge. And Rachel Ray's tip about cleaning and storing all your produce at the beginning of the week is a great one. I wash my celery, carrots, and broccoli and cut it into snack size pieces and put it in a big plastic bin in the fridge for easy snacking all week long.
ReplySpectra I had heard that veggies don't last as long if you clean them ahead of time, so I never have. Have you found this? If not maybe I will give it a try, it would probably result in our eating more vegetables.
ReplyI guess I usually don't have that problem...we eat them fast enough so they don't spoil. I don't wash berries or mushrooms until right before I'm going to eat them because they WILL get moldy/mushy fast. The trick is, you have to make sure they're dry when you put them away or the extra moisture will ruin them. Since I'm pretty cheap, I buy head lettuce instead of the prepackaged stuff and cut it up, wash it, dry it, and put it in a big ziploc bag with a slightly damp paper towel and I have "salad in a bag" to use all week.
ReplyYou're not cheap - you're smart. The prepackaged stuff has been washed in chlorine so that it's clean. Probably so they can rinse off the sewage sludge they grow it in. Then they waste how much on the packaging of it? You're better off with the "real" lettuce. It tastes better too.
ReplyGreat idea! Thanks :)
ReplyThis is an excellent idea. Buying food in bulk is very economical and fast becoming a necessity. Freezing soup works as well, you simply make up a large amount, freeze it in serving size containers and heat them up when you need them. This doesn’t affect the nutritional content; one of the things that makes soup such a high value method of cooking is the way it maintains the nutrients of all the ingredients.
ReplyThis is an Great idea. Starting at the beginning of this last winter I really started getting into eating a lot of different soups.
ReplyThe author mentions not wanting to leave the stove on all day in summer. I agree it's no fun heating up the house, (or leaving the stove on when you're not home). I like starting soup in summer in the morning so we can go enjoy the day without having to worry about supper. So I usually do it in a crockpot. It would be easy to look up some crockpot recipes and pre-bag those. I'm not sure if the recipes here would work in a crockpot but I don't see any reason why they wouldn't, things like lentils and barley do fine.
My favorite summer soup however is a summer borsht, with (baby) beets, potatoes, carrots, green beans and peas, in a chicken or veg broth. There's no dry ingredients but you can cut the veggies up the night before and just dump them in the crockpot earlier in the day. Put the peas and beans in later so they don't get mushy though. A spoonful of sour cream on top and a piece of high fibre rye bread, makes a great supper.
ReplyOooh, I love my crockpot for making soup. It doesn't get that hot and it saves a lot of time. The only thing that I don't like about it is that it's not that big...I like my humongous 18 quart stock pot! But if I only want a small batch of soup, it's perfect.
Another option for summer soup is gazpacho. It's sort of like thinned out salsa. I like to make mine with lots of cilantro, chili peppers, vegetable juice, and fresh tomatoes if I have them. It's really refreshing when it's really hot out.
ReplyThanks for the idea, buying food in bulk and preparing soups by our own will definitely save time and homemade mix is best thing to enjoy!
I’ll have to give it a try.
ReplyYeah, good idea. The average diet is very deficient in veggies and ideas to promote more veggie eating is a good one.
ReplyGreat idea!
How original :-)
this will save me a-lot of time - and we all know time is money! Thanks!
Reply