Cream of Anything Camp Soup
A roux, a can of chicken, and whatever dried vegetable you brought. Thick soup from a flat pantry.
- calories
- 300
- weight
- 5 oz
- cal / oz
- 60
- protein
- 16 g
- serves
- 4, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 20 min
- total time
- 25 min
- water
- 700 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
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- Winter / snow
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Butter | 3 tbsp | olive oil works and travels better in heat |
|---|---|---|
| All-purpose flour | 3 tbsp | |
| Dried minced onion | 1 tbsp | |
| Dried celery flakes | 1/4 cup | or any dried vegetable you have |
| Chicken bouillon powder | 1 tbsp | start with 2 tsp if you want less salt |
| Canned chicken | 1 can | drained |
| Evaporated milk | 1 can (12 oz) | |
| Water | 3 cups |
Method
- Melt the butter in the pot over a low flame. Add the dried onion and celery and let them sit in the fat for a minute.
- Sprinkle the flour over the top. Stir constantly for about four minutes, until it smells like toast and goes light brown. Do not walk away; it burns fast.
- Pour in the evaporated milk and stir until there are no lumps.
- Add the water one cup at a time, stirring smooth after each addition. Rushing this is how you get paste and water instead of soup.
- Stir in the bouillon. Simmer 10 to 15 minutes until the dried vegetables have softened.
- Drain the can of chicken and stir it in at the very end. It only needs to warm through.
This is a bechamel with the fridge taken out of it. The roux is the whole recipe: flour cooked in fat until the raw taste is gone, then loosened with liquid a little at a time. Cook the flour too briefly and the soup tastes like paste. Add the liquid all at once and it clumps.
The camp changes are the dairy and the vegetables. Evaporated milk sits on a shelf for a year and thickens better than fresh milk anyway. Fresh celery becomes dried celery flakes, which rehydrate in the simmer and weigh almost nothing. Canned chicken goes in last because it is already cooked and boiling it just shreds it into strings.
Packing
Flour, onion, celery flakes, and bouillon go in one bag as a dry mix. Butter in a small screw-top tub, or swap in oil in warm weather. Cans ride in the food crate.
Variations
- Dried mushrooms in place of celery, with a spoon of soy sauce at the end.
- Powdered whole milk plus water instead of evaporated milk, which drops a can from the load.
- Stir in a handful of instant potato flakes if the soup ends up thinner than you want.
https://theprepared.com/blog/pantry-recipes-cream-of-anything-soup