Freezer Soup

For as long as I can remember, I’ve served homemade soup with most of my meals. When you have a big family, one of the ways you can save money is by starting out with a hearty bowl of soup to help fill people up. By the time they get to the main meal, it doesn’t take nearly as much meat and potatoes to do the job.

Soup is nutritious and a great way to use up your leftovers when you don’t have enough for another meal, but can’t bear to throw away good food. I always keep a larger plastic tub (like an ice cream bucket) in my freezer for putting my leftovers in to use in a future soup. For example, all of your bits of left over vegetables as well as their juice, (yes, even the salad - minus the dressing) can be added to the soup tub. I usually take the time to cut things up into smaller pieces that are more suitable for soup before I throw them into the freezer, so there’s no prep time at all when I’m actually making the soup.

If I have small bits of left over beef, pork or chicken, I will chop them up into little pieces and toss them into the freezer soup tub along with any gravy that might have also been left over. Smaller amounts of rice, potatoes, and even left over spaghetti chopped up in noodle-size amounts can all be added to the tub. When the tub starts getting full, I dump the big frozen lump all into a big pot, add water and either a couple of packages of onion soup mix for a beef flavour, or chicken bouillon for a chicken flavour, bring it to a boil and quick as a wink, my homemade soup is ready.

In the winter, I make a lot of different kinds of soup more often, so if I have larger amounts of leftovers, I freeze them individually in baggies. This is also what I do if I have a fresh vegetable that I know I will not be using up right away, but will go bad if I don’t do something with it. Celery is one of those things that sometimes starts to go limp before you can get a whole head used up. When that happens, I chop the whole thing up and freeze the pieces into sandwich bags. Same with carrots that start looking past their prime. I shred them with a grater and bag them up individually. Fresh parsley or other herbs that can’t get all used up before they start turning yellow can be chopped up and frozen in ice cube trays covered with water. When they are frozen, store them in a freezer baggie and you can just add one or two cubes to your soups as you wish.

Left over mashed potatoes will help thicken a soup, and you can even pour the last of your milk or gravy into the same bag to freeze. By freezing things individually, you can tailor make your soups. If I find a baggie of chopped up frozen spaghetti and a baggie of frozen chopped up chicken pieces, I start the water boiling with my chicken bouillon because I have all I need for chicken noodle soup. A baggie of chopped up broccoli and one of cheese sauce sounds like the basis for a cream of broccoli soup to me. The list is endless.

Of course, there’s nothing like a scratch broth to make soup with. If I have a chicken or turkey carcass, the bones don’t go into the garbage until they have simmered on the stove for a day with onions and celery, salt and pepper and sage. After they’ve cooked for several hours, I let the pot cool, then remove the bones and fat. What is left is a delicious broth. Adding whatever vegetables you might have makes the best turkey or chicken vegetable soup you can imagine.  Most modern families think that soup comes out of a can. My family knows that nothing beats freezer soup.