Goose, Wild Rice, and Mushroom Soup
Leftover roast goose, dried at home, rebuilt into a thick wild rice soup on a cold night.
- calories
- 720
- weight
- 5.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 131
- protein
- 38 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
- Backpacking
- Basecamp
- Winter / snow
- Car camping
- One pot
- Dehydrate ahead
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Cooked wild rice, dehydrated | 1/2 cup | cook it fully at home, then dry it flat; raw wild rice takes 45 minutes |
|---|---|---|
| Roast goose meat, dried | 1/2 cup | duck or dark turkey works the same way; canned chicken if you have no bird |
| Dried mushrooms | 1/3 oz | morel, porcini, or black trumpet, crumbled small |
| Dried vegetable flakes | 1/4 cup | leek, celery, carrot, parsnip, onion |
| Chicken or game bouillon | 2 tsp | |
| Whole milk powder | 3 tbsp | stands in for the cream |
| All-purpose flour | 2 tbsp | the thickener; use 1 tbsp if you want it brothy |
| Olive oil | 1 tbsp | goose fat if you rendered some and can keep it cool |
| Real bacon bits | 2 tbsp | |
| Dried thyme | 1/4 tsp | |
| Salt and black pepper | to taste | |
| Dried parsley | 1 tsp |
Method
- Stir the flour into the oil in your cup or lid until it is a smooth paste. Do this first, dry pot, no lumps.
- Bring 600 ml of water to a boil. Add the rice, meat, mushrooms, vegetable flakes, bouillon, bacon bits, and thyme.
- Simmer on low for about 8 minutes, stirring so the rice does not catch. The mushrooms want the full time to soften.
- Stir in the oil-and-flour paste. Keep stirring for two minutes while it thickens.
- Kill the heat. Sprinkle the milk powder over the surface and stir it in off the flame so it does not scorch.
- Salt, pepper, parsley, lid on for a minute, eat.
This started as a post-holiday soup built on a goose carcass and a pot of homemade broth. Neither travels. Bouillon covers the broth, whole milk powder covers the cream, and the meat gets cooked and dried at home like any other jerky-adjacent protein.
The wild rice is the part people get wrong. Uncooked, it needs 45 minutes and a lot of fuel. Cook it at home, dry it, and it comes back in eight. The flour-and-oil paste is worth the extra thirty seconds: dumped in dry, flour makes lumps you cannot stir out with a spoon in a narrow pot.
Packing
Everything dry goes in one quart bag except the flour and the milk powder, which get their own small bags. Both go in late and both clump if they ride loose with the rice.
Variations
- Two tablespoons of instant potato flakes replace the flour and make it gluten-free.
- A splash of sherry from a small bottle at the end is closer to the original, if you are car camping.
- Skip the meat and double the mushrooms for a lighter carry.
https://foragerchef.com/goose-soup