Sunday, January 9, 2011

5 soups in 1 day

As I prepare for winter weather I'm making up some homemade soup. I'm trying to be as cost and time efficient as possible. Here's my process:

1st ~ I have two pots of beans on the stove now. One smaller pot of Great Northern Beans for White Bean Chicken Chili and a large pot of Kidney Beans and Red Beans for chili and taco soup.
Those will continue to cook at a high boil while I'm shopping (Patrick will man them for me while I'm gone). This method requires that you pay attention and continually add water, but they will be done in just a few hours from start to finish . (REALLY makes me wish I had a pressure cooker.)

2nd ~ Put a whole chicken on to boil.

3rd ~ Brown ground venison.

4th ~ Cut up required veggies for all soups.

5th ~ Assemble two of the soups in crockpots (probably taco soup and chili and put all ingredients for vegetable soup in a pot on the stove. The vegetable soup will be finished first and can be set aside to cool.

6th ~ While veg soup is cooling and crockpot soups are cooking, shred chicken.

7th ~ Use shredded chicken and reserved broth to assemble white bean chicken chili and virus killing soup in pots on the stove.

Using this method. I should have 5 very large pots of soup (probably at least a gallon per soup) finished in just a few hours. Most of these are good for at least a full supper for all of us and a leftover lunch for a few of us. I will probably use the leftover chili to make frito pie. All of this would be meals that we could heat in a pot on the coleman stove if we lost power. It's cheaper to make soup from scratch and tastes better too. Also, if we don't use them for winter weather, then I've just made meals easier for myself on busy days.

Edited to add : I didn't end up getting all of this done. I forgot that I needed to pay bills, so I didn't get to head to the grocery store early enough to beat the crowds. By the time I got there it was CRAZY!!!! Then I forgot the chicken. So I got all of the beef soups cooked and ready to go in the freezer and I got the white beans ready for the chicken chili. I'll take care of the chicken soups later today.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I usually cook my beans in the crockpot in the morning. It only takes about 4 hours on high. :)