ALRIGHT you little trash goblin, I hear you wanna eat better and you need help filling your little heart and stomach. Well guess what, it’s gettin’ in on Autumn and you know what that means? SOUP SEASON!!!!
“But Zach”, I hear you whine a little too nasally, “Soup is boring after the like….4th time I eat the same thing.” to which I reply “NEAT! DON’T! We’re gonna take the Pho approach to soup today!”
Do you have a freezer? Do you have access to ziplock bags? Then you have everything you need to make 12,000 soups in advance that take 5 minutes to prepare once you’re ready to eat!
It’s meal prep day! What do you do? Well, you prep a ton of broth, meat, veg, etc. Almost everything you’d want in a soup freezes reasonably well and store them in baggies.
Let’s start with the “hardest” part. It’s only the hardest because there’s about a dozen ways to stick this pig.
Broth: The goal here is an over-strong broth. If you make your own, reduce your broth down. If you don’t have time to boil down a broth from scratch, that’s fine. Just get boxed broth or dress up some bullion broth with some spices, garlic and onion. It’s fine, if it tastes good to you and you’re happy, I’m happy. Don’t let nobody tell you you’re doing it wrong unless you do it X way. This is GOBLIN COOKIN’ NOW, @#%^! Whatever way you do it, just make sure it’s SUPER STRONG and TASTY.
Now you have some options on how you can fancy this up AND make it easier to store. You can either:
A: freeze the broth in ice cube trays then re-package into baggies that make it easier to store.
B: Let it cool then pour it directly into ziplocks baggies, seal then stack flat and let freeze.
C: Thicken it with something like gelatin or potato starch, which will make the broth silkier when thinned back down as well as let it setup into a kind of jello or paste when cooled in the fridge. Once it’s gel/paste pack that in baggies and freeze it that way.
I like option C personally, Don’t worry that it sounds/looks unappealing when you store it, add water and it’ll return to normal in no time.
No matter which option you picked, remember you made it EXTRA strong for a reason, right? Well that’s because when you go to make your soup, you’re gonna mix that frozen broth ~1:1 with water. That water will make the soup thaw faster, make it microwaveable without any fuss and will make sure your broth isn’t taking up more much space in your freezer than required! Win-win-win!
Now that we have the hard part out of the way, you just….prep and baggie up your toppings. Mushrooms? Sautee those little bastards, portion into snack baggies and freeze. Potato? Fry it, bake it, slow cook it, whatever….we’re putting it in a stew! Just make sure they’re in bite sized bits, pack in a small baggie and freeze! Meat? SAME THING! Vegetables? SAME. THING.
You can do these as individuals and unseasoned, you can make medleys and/or specific seasonings, it doesn’t matter, but portion them, freeze them in snack sized baggies and call it good. I think you see where this is going and it works for just about anything.
Don’t have time to buy fresh veggies and process them yourself? STORE BOUGHT WILL DO! Go to Costco, Cash and Carry, Winco, wherever and buy yourself some bags of frozen veggies and portion those out. Doing it that way, you can have a month’s worth of veggies portioned out in an hour or less. Want seasonings like you’d get in Top Ramen? Get yourself some little condiment cups or some tiny reusable containers like Baby Food jars or something and load them up with spices to take with you.
Pasta….Okay….this is where things get a little odd. If you wanna do pasta, get a HEFTY noodle, like udon, cook it to JUST UNDER cooked, drain well and freeze it that way. Alternatively, make/buy yourself some fresh pasta, cut it, portion it and freeze it that way. It’ll stay pretty good in the freezer for about 2-3 weeks. There are also freeze-dried noodles (like Ramen) that you can buy online or in your local Asian markets. If you wanna use rice? Rice freezes just fine for 2-3 weeks as well. Or you can just buy minute rice that you can microwave. Once it’s in the soup you’re not gonna notice the texture weirdness of minute rice that much.
Anyway, package all these things up and put them in the freezer or for things like rice, sesame seeds and spice cups: a dry cupboard. If you make varieties of them seasoned differently, just…label them.
And the really neat thing about this way of packaging is that it works REALLY well with leftovers. Have half a pot roast you’re not gonna finish over the next couple of days? Cube it up, label it “roast beef” and toss it in the freezer. Leftover takeout thing of Vegetable Stir-fry that’s gonna just sit in the fridge? Baggie it and label it “Mixed Vegetables”. You’ve just upped your stock of soup fixins.
Now when you go to make food, you reach in and grab…oh, I dunno….a pouch of beef stock, a baggie of mushrooms, some of your spicy beef, a baggie of leftover takeout stir-fry and one of those little cups of hot sauce that’s leftover from the last time you went for Mexican Takeout. Throw that into your lunchbox and take that to work. Once lunch time rolls around, slam that all in a bowl, add about a cup of water, microwave for 1-2 minutes. Stir. Microwave again for 1 minutes and boom. Instant soup that’s different from yesterdays.
Tomorrow you can have vegetable broth, some of that shredded Costco rotisserie chicken, a soy sauce packet, 1/2 a cup of minute rice, a little jar of sesame seeds, togarashi seasoning and black pepper, and an egg to crack into it when it’s hot.
The next day some of that homemade chicken broth you made from the carcass of said rotisserie chicken, some more of that chicken, but now you’re going for a frozen cube of petso, some noodles and a packet of mixed veggies for a home-made Chicken Noodle Soup.
Maybe you turn a pumpkin into a soup base and then take a packet of bacon and mirepoix with you on Friday and season it with a jar that contains a teaspoon of your favorite pre-made curry paste.
As you can see, this can be bulked out or kept as narrow as you want, you can add more fixings until your bowl is over flowing and you can basically turn your freezer into the Subway of Soup.
Now go forth and feast your autumn heart upon ALL THE SOUPS. ALL OF THEM. NO WAIT! THAT’S TOO MANY SOUPS! PUT SOME BACK!!!!
Hehe, no, I lied. There’s never too many soups.