Lasagna Soup, Packed Dry
Broken pasta, tomato powder, and Italian herbs. A lasagna's worth of tomato in one pot.
- calories
- 720
- weight
- 5.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 131
- protein
- 26 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 3 min
- cook
- 12 min
- total time
- 15 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
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Small dry pasta | 1 cup | farfalle or penne; broken lasagna sheets work if that is what you have |
|---|---|---|
| Tomato powder | 3 tbsp | stands in for the crushed and diced tomatoes |
| Sun-dried tomato pieces | 2 tbsp | the chew the powder cannot give you |
| Vegetable bouillon | 1 cube or 1 tsp | |
| Dried minced onion | 1 tbsp | |
| Garlic powder | 1 tsp | |
| Dried basil | 1 tsp | |
| Crushed red pepper | 1/4 tsp | |
| Salt | 1/4 tsp | |
| Dried spinach flakes | 1/4 cup | or a handful of freeze-dried spinach |
| Grated parmesan | 2 tbsp | the shelf-stable shaker kind |
| Freeze-dried ground turkey or beef | 1/2 cup | skip it for the meatless version |
| Olive oil | 1 tbsp |
Method
- Bring 600 ml of water to a boil. Drop in the bouillon, tomato powder, sun-dried tomatoes, onion, garlic, basil, red pepper, and salt. Stir until the powder stops clumping.
- Add the pasta and the freeze-dried meat. Boil, stirring often, until the pasta is soft — eight to ten minutes for penne, less for smaller shapes.
- Stir in the spinach flakes and pull the pot off the heat. Lid on, two minutes.
- Add the parmesan and the oil. Stir until it thickens up, then eat straight from the pot.
This started as a pressure cooker recipe, which is not a thing you carry. The move is to replace the two cans of tomatoes with tomato powder and sun-dried pieces — canned tomato is mostly water, and water is at the trailhead. Boiling the pasta directly in the tomato broth means the starch stays in the pot and thickens it, which is the same reason the original works.
The cheese is doing two jobs: salt and fat. Mozzarella does not travel, so it is gone; hard grated parmesan is shelf-stable for weeks and melts into the broth without turning it into strings. The oil goes in at the end because boiled oil just floats. Off the heat and stirred, it binds to the starch.
Packing
Everything dry except the parmesan and oil goes in one bag. Parmesan in its own small bag, oil in a leakproof bottle.
Variations
- Leave out the meat and the parmesan and it is a vegan tomato pasta soup.
- A tablespoon of powdered milk stirred in at the end pushes it toward a creamy tomato base.
- Add less water and you get a sauce instead of a soup. Both work.
https://domesticsuperhero.com/healthy-instant-pot-lasagna-soup