Friday Food Storage Quickie: The Soup Pot
Sharon December 4th, 2009
It is Friday again, and time to add a few more things to our reserve of food. Because Thanksgiving has just past and winter is coming on (not that you could tell yesterday here in upstate NY where it was 60 degrees, but hey), and I thought it would be good to add some soup ingredients to your pantry. So this week we’re going to add lentils or beans and some onions and carrots. We’ll also throw a few seasonings in.
Why lentils or beans? Well, it is perfectly possible to make a tasty bean or lentil soup without much of anything else lying around. Good, tasty legumes will make a slightly bland but not unpleasant broth pretty much by themselves, as long as you have seasonings and vegetables. If you can add some wine, or soy sauce or fresh herbs or a chunk of meat it will be that much better, assuming you like that sort of thing, and many of us can, but a really basic lentil or bean soup is simply not that hard, and it is good.
I like a range of legumes – to me Hutterite bean soup and Lentil Soup and Black bean are all really different and wonderful flavors, but you can pick anything you and your family like. Lentils have the advantage of not requiring soaking or precooking, but dealing with dried beans is easier than a lot of us think – you just have to remember to put them on the night before to soak. If you need to cook them ahead (recently harvested dried beans often don’t need precooking, but old ones do), a solar oven (if it is the season), a thermos or hay box cooker (heat it up to a boil and put it somewhere to stay hot), a pressure cooker or the back of your woodstove will help reduce the energy and attention involved.
You can make bean soup out of almost anything, but I’d have a hard time getting it done without some onion family vegetables – onions and garlic are the basic staples of all cooking around here. The great thing about them is that even in a regular kitchen, they will keep a few months if you put them in a cool spot, and if you have a cold cellar, or any part of your house that doesn’t freeze but gets pretty chilly (consistently below 50 degrees) you can buy in bulk and store a lot of onions and garlic. Otherwise, consider dehydrating onions and garlic – not quite good, but still worth eating. Right now near me I can buy 50 lbs of onions for 16 dollars direct from the farmer – that’s a lot cheaper than at the supermarket.
I also recommend carrots, which can be stored in cold storage for several months, or dehydrated and added directly to soups and stews. Again, this is the time to do it, as farmers wind up the harvest. Carrots are delicious in a whole host of ways – just having fresh carrot sticks to go with your soup is a gift.
Everything tastes better with herbs and spices, so make sure you are gradually adding these to your pantry. Ground spices store 1 year at room temperature (keep them away from heat and light) or 2-3 years in the freezer. Whole spices store almost indefinitely. Dried herbs if kept dark and cool also last a year, but the nicest way to have them is to have some fresh, so consider bringing in a few plants over the winter if you have a sunny windowsill. It is worth adding these to your pantry now, since many stores have spices on sale before the holidays.
And this week we’re also going to add one thing to our more general preps – it is time to get ready for cold times, so make sure that you have sufficient blankets to keep warm if the heat goes out, or if you ever have to take in friends or family. If you don’t, check out your local thrift shop.
Finally, let’s not forget how many people don’t have a good pot of soup on their stoves these days. As you are out shopping, pick up some extra food for the food pantry – certainly onions, carrots and lentils will be welcome, but consider adding some cans of pre-made soup, for those who not only lack food, but cooking skills, or access to a kitchen or time to cook.
This feature, the Independence Days Update and a few others will remain at this blog regularly, with weekly (I hope) updates. On Monday, I’ll be premiering the new blog, but this one will remain active and archived.
Cheers,
Sharon
- food storage quickie
- Comments(22)
Can anyone who cooks at high altitudes please give me some hints on how to cook the beans? I can soak for days and cook 12 hours and still have hard or mostly hard beans. I’ve tried adding salt at the end, using a crockpot, etc.- but no luck. I’d strongly prefer not to have to buy a pressure cooker due to space limitations – and a memorable explosion with black beans when I was young- but if that’s the only way to do it I will. Otherwise all I have are art supplies for bean mosaics.
Thanks in advance!
Sharon, I may have just missed reading it, but what is the link to your new space? If you already posted it, I’d be happy to just check the archives.
Any tips on foisting beans/lentils on reluctant eaters? I made a delightful pot of vegetable, barley, and split red lentil soup the other day (you can’t even really see the lentils as they kind of fall apart and the tomatoes made the soup a little red-orangey anyway), and can’t get my husband to try it. At least, he hasn’t yet. Suggestions are appreciated.
Good to know that you are going to keep the ‘quickies’ going here.
I love reading them & trying to put your suggestions into practice gives me a focus.
I’ll be following your writing on you new blog too.
Thanks for reminding me! I have about 10 lb of lentils in my pantry and it’s going to be cool this weekend, so it’s lentil soup (maybe in the crockpot) for me!!
I was good last weekend on the storage front – I cooked up some of my ancient pinto beans leftover from Y2K (yeah, I know) and stuck them in ziploc bags in the freezer so they would be handy for a quick supper. They took a little longer to cook, but they are fine. Beans store almost forever…….
I haven’t yet posted a link to the new blog, since it is not officially live yet – but I promise, I will, first thing Monday morning.
Can anyone who lives way up help Jade? I’ve heard of needing more time, but never of not being able to cook them to softness at all. Does this happen with all beans for you?
Getting other folks to eat them – I would go with the evil trick method myself
– sneak them into other things and then tell them they might as well suck it up since they’ve been eating lentils for two months. Or you could withold sex 
.
Sharon
Evil trick method: I’m trying that with the veggie soup. He’s not buying at the moment. I suppose it doesn’t help that I’m simultaneously trying to shift our diet more vegetarian in the most stealthy way possible (with mixed success, even on my end).
How does the saying go? Something about keeping on? Fuzzy mind today….
Jade:
I’m not sure how high in altitude you mean. I am in Denver and haven’t had problems other than when trying to cook some really old (multiyear) beans. Those would only get to al dente texture but everything else works fine.
—-
I just made several soups. It’s a great way to use the turkey carcass (for us omnivores) after the Thanksgiving or other holiday feasts. Last night my sweety was having her fibery art friends over to learn about loom warping so I through together a vegetarian lentil soup for the crew (the instructress is vegetarian and one attendee can’t have soy, so it was a challenge.)
The crockpot is a great boon for soup making. Everything can be pitched in in the morning and soup is magically done in the evening. Since it makes lots some of it goes into freezer containers for cheap fast meals later on. It’s a multi win situation.
Thanks Sharon. We even went to a yuppie restaurant the other week for lunch and their beans weren’t cooked through either. You know the feeling where you can bite into them but they’re underdone and gritty? More underdone than al dente.
Note to self: Actually obtain crockpot this winter. (But this winter I will have Something Resembling Free time! Finally!)
I did some quick research on high altitute cooking, and the best I find was that you more or less need a pressure cooker. If you are going to get one, I’d get a pressure canner that you can also cook in.
My mother always made a sweet/sour bean soup after the holidays–basically a bean soup using northern beans with carrots and onions and celery which was cooked for hours and then sugar and vinegar was added. She served it with homemade dark rye bread and butter.
I freeze my turkey carcasses after the holiday dinners and then use them in Jan and Feb when everyone feels like eating turkey again. I keep all the fat and skin and “stuff” and cut up the carcass to fit into a container and make a turkey broth that’s the basis for soups and casseroles. It’s amazing how many meals you can get out of a carcass.
Deb in Wis, watching it snow
lentils are my favorite. I always have at least three varieties on hand: regular green/brown, red, and black. If you can get them, lentils de Puy are awe3some. I’m also partial to split peas. And garbanzos. Oh and limas. Those are my favorites, but we also have to have black beans, pinto beans and copa de mayo beans for my hispanic husband. Then there are mung beans for sprouting, and all the wonderful heirloom beans, from flageolet to jacob’s cattle…. I love beans.
Thanks MEA. Looks like I’ll need to research a non-exploding pressure cooker.
When I was 12 or so my mom went back to work, and since my older siblings all had exciting things to do and could drive to do them, I was left with the job of preparing dinner. Picture the scene when my mom is driving up the driveway and I’ve got a pot of black bean soup spinning and hissing on the floor (where it ended up after spinning off the stove), hot as hell and spraying goo up to the ceiling and all around the cupboards. Did you know black bean soup leaves purple stains on white paint?
Guess what I did that summer. It involved a ladder.
Regarding cooking beans at high altitude – I live in Colorado at 7500 ft altitude – I soak twice with boiling water each time. After the first soaking cools – I drain the beans and then add more boiling water and let soak overnight. It will still take a full day of cooking the next day but they will get as soft as you want them. I use a crock pot in the summer and I cook on a cookstove in the winter and keep the pot covered at a low simmer until they are as done as I want them. Season them when they are done. I have a friend who lives up the mountain from me at 9000 ft and this works for her too.
BTW – your blog is one of my favorites – great comments, too!
Thanks Cathy. Ill try that again, since we’re close enough that should probably work. I’ll also try to follow Bill the Galactic Hero’s thoughtful advice and get beans that aren’t too old- although I’m not yet sure how to tell when they were packaged.
Wish me luck everyone! I’d love to get rid of the canned beans and try my own.
for those trying lentils/split peas/beans to feed to others, I’d think that just presenting the dish as part of a meal maybe once a week or every two weeks might get them at least to try it.
Also, I think any lentil dish could be advertised as a weight control device! maybe it’s just me but my 2 or 3 lentil dishes, once or twice a week seem to keep my belly a little flatter.
Peace to all,
Shamba
Any beans in my soup result from left over beans from bean dishes. I slow roast all meats, and save the liquids for soup the following week. I save all bones in the freezer. When I expect to want a great soup, I boil the bones in a huge pot with water, vinegar, salt, and sometimes herbs. In the cold season the bone pot sits in the cold pantry to be added to and reboiled. In the warm season it sits in a warm oven. Scoops of bone broth go in with the meat broths. Next come raw veggies, like onions and garlic. Left over meats, veggies, and starches [beans, grains, potatoes, noodles, etc] go in near the end. Then drizzles of scrambled duck eggs. We have a soup/stew dinner of it [my husband calls it super stew], then we reheat it for lunches for the week. My husbands’ soup goes into wide-mouth pint canning jars into the fridge freezer, and he grabs one each day to take to work with him and reheat in the company microwave. I just reheat at home in the microwave, usually adding water because I like mine thinner. He takes a thick slice of bread from our Notre Dame Brothers bakery to soak up the dregs. I sometimes add cheese after reheating. Sometimes he likes a blob of miso on the bottom. Sometimes I add a bit of Braggs aminos with the water. There’s nothing better on a cold fall/winter/spring day than to come inside after harvesting/shoveling snow/planting, and caring for animals, than scooping out super stew, heating it, and eating it. For my husband, it is love from home.
Jade – I’m at 5,000 ft and I like my beans really soft. I also have several year old beans. What I do is sort, rinse, soak in fresh water at room temperature 8 – 12 hours (sometimes more), drain, put in pot or crockpot with fresh water and nothing else (no salt, even).
One trick I finally learned is to put in PLENTY of water for soaking and cooking, at least 1-2 inches above the top of the beans. Then I cook for as many hours as it takes (but it never takes longer than 24 hours) usually 2 – 5 on top of stove or 12 – 16 hours in crockpot. I also find that beans have to be really boiling/fast simmering. Not just sitting in hot water. Sounds like you’re higher than 5,000 ft. so I hope this helps.
Tons of great information on this blog! Thanks Sharon & all!
Getting dry beans to cook at high altitude-
I don’t know if this would do it for you, but kombu sea vegetable helps tenderize them at our altitude (yeah… that would be Florida) and reduces the methane output as well. You should be able to find it at health food stores. It doesn’t take much, and for those who might object to the notion of eating seaweed the flavor isn’t noticeable, and can be cut into small pieces so it looks basically like a spice and nobody has to be the wiser.
Susan W. and Mellifera-
Thanks for the strategies. As soon as the weather gets above 6 degrees I’m going to try them all in combination: young beans, two hot soaks in plenty of water, cooking without salt, in a pressure cooker, with kombu. And those beans better be soft!
Maybe I’ll even run the crockpot along side as a test case. I’m on a quest now.
Jade, when you do, send me an email about it, or post a weblink to what worked. I’d like to know!
Thanks,
Sharon
I know nothing about high altitude cooking but I did learn early in my cooking life that the WATER makes a big difference in cooking beans. When I first moved away from home, I thought that cooking good beans was just something momma did and I didn’t have the knack. Mom would send me home with frozen care packages of cooked pinto beans. Lucky I was stubborn and every so often I would try again. When I moved to a new city all of a sudden I could cook beans! Duh! I finally figured out that the water makes a major difference! Different municipalities have differences in water – whether described as hard or soft water, some have more minerals or more calcium, fluoride added etc. etc.
While I’m sure altitude has to be adjusted for, consider trying a bottled water … maybe even distilled.