Chicken and Mushroom Pot Soup
Dried mushrooms, freeze-dried chicken, and a milk-powder roux. Thin enough to drink, thick enough to count as dinner.
- calories
- 620
- weight
- 4.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 138
- protein
- 34 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 2 min
- cook
- 12 min
- total time
- 14 min
- water
- 600 ml boiled
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Canister stove
- Liquid fuel
- Alcohol / Esbit
- Backpacking
- Basecamp
- Winter / snow
- Car camping
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Freeze-dried chicken | 2 oz | the diced kind, not jerky |
|---|---|---|
| Dried sliced mushrooms | 1/2 cup | shiitake or a mixed bag |
| Dried mirepoix | 1/4 cup | onion, carrot, celery flakes |
| Garlic powder | 1 tsp | |
| All-purpose flour | 2 tbsp | |
| Whole milk powder | 3 tbsp | |
| Chicken bouillon | 2 tsp | low sodium if you can find it |
| Dried thyme, rosemary, oregano | 1/2 tsp total | |
| Red pepper flakes | a pinch | |
| Black pepper and salt | to taste | |
| Olive oil | 1 tbsp | |
| Dried parsley | 1 tsp | |
| Bay leaf | 1 |
Method
- Bring 600 ml of water to a boil. Dump in the chicken, mushrooms, mirepoix, bouillon, herbs, garlic powder, pepper flakes, and the bay leaf.
- Simmer on low for eight minutes. The mushrooms need every one of them.
- Shake the flour and milk powder together with about 100 ml of cool water in a bottle until no lumps are left. Do this while the pot simmers.
- Pour the slurry in slowly, stirring the whole time. Keep it at a low simmer for two or three minutes until it thickens.
- Kill the heat. Stir in the oil, fish out the bay leaf, salt to taste, and scatter the parsley on top.
The original is a stovetop soup built on a butter roux, half and half, and a cutting board’s worth of fresh vegetables. None of that travels. The fat comes from olive oil instead of butter, the cream from whole milk powder, and the mirepoix from dried flakes that rehydrate in the same water everything else cooks in.
The roux is the part that needed rethinking. You cannot brown flour in a pot you also want to boil in without scorching it, so the flour goes in as a cold slurry with the milk powder at the end. Cold water first is not optional here: flour dropped into boiling stock seizes into lumps you will be chasing with a spoon for ten minutes. Eight minutes of simmer before that is what gets the dried mushrooms from leathery to actually edible.
Packing
Everything dry except the flour and milk powder goes in one bag. Those two ride in a second small bag, because they are the only part that has to be mixed with cold water first.
Variations
- Swap the bouillon for vegetable and drop the chicken for a mushroom-only version.
- Instant potato flakes instead of the flour slurry thicken it faster and skip the lump problem, at the cost of a heavier texture.
- A handful of egg noodles in step one turns it into a full pot meal.
https://domesticsuperhero.com/chicken-mushroom-soup-one-pot