MRE Soup: Thermos Bottle Cookery

I needed to come up with a tasty soup to take tomorrow on my foraging class.  So I decided to use my dehydrated foods.

Preheat your thermos

 The first thing to do is preheat your thermos bottles with boiling water. Seal the lids until you are ready to use them. If you don't preheat the bottles, they will cool down sooner and your soup may not be completely cooked.

Powder some ingredients

From experience, I know that some things take longer to rehydrate.  So I decided to powder the following ingredients. Powdering them gives you the flavor and makes them easier to mix.

You may use whatever you especially like.

• Dehydrated shredded potatoes
• Dehydrated cooked ground beef pebbles
• Dehydrated tomatoes
• Dehydrated celery 

 Add seasonings

I put a little of each of the powdered ingredients in my mortar and pestle.

Then I added my favorite seasonings:

• Salt
• Garlic powder
• Basil
• Parsley
• Fresh ground pepper

I used the mortar and pestle to grind them all together.  How much of what to use?  Don’t know… sorry… I’m a taste and stir kinda cook.  I just kept mixing and adding until I liked the taste of the ingredients.  Like all soups, you season it to your personal taste.

Empty the thermos bottles

When you are ready to make the soup, return that hot water to the kettle.  Set it on the fire and reheat to boiling.  Notice that instead of dumping the water, I’m reusing it. Some Preppers have expressed concern that it takes too much water to rehydrate food.  Not a real issue. 

Add the powders

I used about ¼ cup of the seasoned powder mixture in each thermos.

Mushrooms and Onions!

My soups always get:

• crushed dehydrated mushrooms
• crushed dehydrated onions

Soup One

I added about a tablespoon of each of the following ingredients:

• dehydrated chopped bell peppers
• dehydrated cooked barley (two tbsp)
• dehydrated cooked ground beef (two tbsp)
• dehydrated canned hominy

Soup Two

Add about a tablespoon of each of the following ingredients

• dehydrated chopped red bell peppers
• dehydrated frozen corn
• dehydrated canned black beans (two tbsp)
• dehydrated cooked rice (two tbsp)

Give it a shake

Make sure all the ingredients are moistened by giving the thermos a shake.

I let mine set for one hour. When I opened it, I had tender, piping hot soup!  Delish! 

What to do with this soup:

• plan ahead of time to grind your ingredients.
• perfect for picnics, camping trips, travel food
• perfect for MRE’s and emergency food

Linda's Note:
You can apply this principle to just about any one-dish meal, soups, stews, etc.  Generally, I use a wide-mouth thermos for each person when we're traveling, camping, and so forth.  But today I was planning on a foraging trip where I'll be hiking through the woods.  I wanted something compact to carry.