Rotation Soup: Prep Well and Eat Well

I keep a pretty well-stocked pantry that has seen its share of difficult moments: vermin, insects, and a roof leak, to name a few. With all the challenges of keeping preps up to date, you want to be a friend of your pantry, not an enemy. This means being more organized than I have been in the past. 

I know they say that you can eat canned food years past the Best Before Date, but, in my own experience, I wouldn’t go more than a year out. Daisy has written a great article recently on how to keep your pantry organized and rotate your preps. Check it out to get some great tips! 

This article will share a revelation that I had about making soup. In my home, growing up, you always needed a recipe. Now, don’t get me wrong, my mother was a great cook. But one day, I was visiting a friend in the afternoon, and we were both getting a little hungry. “I’ll make some soup,” he said and lifted a big pot onto the stove. I remember thinking, “You can’t just make soup like that!” I then watched him throw in, well, everything except the kitchen sink. The lid literally would not fit on this pot until all the stuff had cooked down a bit. I didn’t know you could just “make soup” like that.

We sat there, having a great chat over coffee, and then around 25 minutes later, he declared the soup was ready. It was delicious! With that experience under my belt, I realized that I, too, could make a soup without a recipe…AND rotate my preps so I never face eating a gross overly old can of whatever again.

Broth Variations

I make my soup in a dutch oven, which holds around a gallon. My broth habits have varied over the years. For a while, I liked having those cubes around. Then, I went purist and made my own veggie broth from my own veggie scraps.

These days, I’m on a bone broth kick. I throw one large tetra pak of bone broth in my dutch oven and then an equal amount of water. This fills it around half way up.  I organize my tetra paks on the shelf so that I am always getting the oldest one first. 

If I had some broth in the freezer, I would make sure that it was dated and also try to use it within a year. It’s not that it’s going bad in there, but the flavor just won’t be the same.

Protein Variations

When a dear friend dropped off a huge turkey breast as a holiday gift, I had a couple meals from the meat and then used the rest to make soup. If I think my iron is low, I’ll fry up a hamburger patty and throw that in. As I love beans, I will always throw some in, too. Quick-cooking red lentils are a favorite of mine. If anything happens to reduce access to fuel (hmmmm, like an APOCALYPSE!?!), then this little fast-cooking lentil is a good one to get to know.

Starch Variations

Most often, I do a mix of starches. I like to pull out a potato from storage and grate it and throw it in. This gives my soup a delightful stew-like consistency. I do love noodles, so I will also throw in a few spaghetti noodles, breaking them in half before I throw them in.

Veggie Variations

This is where I check all three of my layers of winter vegetable storage to assess if there is anything that needs to be used immediately. I described all three of these layers in more detail in this article.  As all layers of vegetables stored at fall harvest are still keeping well, I am selecting based on wanting to create a soup with a lot of nutritional variety. Inevitably, there will be some spoilage. When I went to my cool(er) room storage for a carrot yesterday, one had gone bad, but the others are still sprouting and going strong after several months.

Other Add-Ins

You can do the same thing by rotating your canned goods to add to your soups. You can also use veggies in the fridge that need to be used up.

One Example

I wanted to share how fun and creative this can be. Enjoy while you rotate! Here is a list of the ingredients from the most recent version that I made, along with their pantry status: 

• 4 cups Bone Broth plus 4 cups water – rotation system in place
• 1 carrot (layer 2) – one carrot discarded, sawdust re-dampened 
• 2 beets (layer 1), – all beets checked for spoilage and rinsed – all OK. The tops were actually sprouting, so I planted them by the window to see if they would grow.
• 1 firm sweet potato (layer 2) – perfect condition, sawdust re-dampened
• 2 onions (cool(er) room) – 10 pound bag for less than $2 – what a deal!
• 3 cloves garlic – regular pantry
• handful dried basil (from garden) – stored in regular pantry
• hot pepper flakes – regular pantry
• 1/2 brick organic tofu cut into cubes – purchased recently
• 1 can mixed beans – rotation check
• 1 cup frozen roasted butternut squash cubes (originally from garden – then cool(er) room for 3.5 months, then roasted last month. I checked the freezer and wanted to use them up, making more space in my tiny freezer for this soup!) *It is great to keep some of these cubes frozen to throw into any soup you make!*
• 6 large leaves of organic kale and stalks – purchased recently; I randomly found the largest bundle of kale I had ever SEEN at a high end grocery store on sale for $1.38. You BET I bought it. 1/3 went into the soup. 1/3 will be used for kale chips and the last of it in a delicious kale omelette. It has been rinsed and is being stored in my fridge wrapped in two damp tea towels. It now looks better than when I bought it!
• 1 celery stalk (layer 1) – kept well hydrated by rinsing regularly, this was in perfect condition after a few weeks

I simmered this for over 30 minutes. I want the onion soft, not crunchy. I had to add a few cups of water to keep the broth level up. I want it to be around 2 inches from the top, so it won’t boil over. 

How Much Does It Make?

I came out of this with 10 meals! Adding up the cost of the broth, tofu, beans, and kale, you get less than $6.50. The cost of everything else was negligible or from my garden. I count a serving two cups of soup. I kept enough for two meals in the fridge and froze the rest. This is how I eat all winter, going from one soup to the next, freezing some and overlapping them a bit. Every time I make my soup, it is an opportunity to check the three layers of my winter vegetables and ensure my pantry is properly rotated. 

Rotation Soup: A Prepper Pantry’s Best Friend

Keep your preps rotated with this easy freestyle soup. How do you ensure your pantry is rotated? Do you make a soup similar to this or something else? Please tell us in the comments section.