Tomato, Potato, and Bacon Camp Soup
A thin, smoky vegetable soup built from dried potato slices and a foil pouch of bacon.
- calories
- 420
- weight
- 4 oz
- cal / oz
- 105
- protein
- 14 g
- serves
- 2, 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
- Lunch
- Canister stove
- Liquid fuel
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Backpacking
- Canoe / raft
- Gluten free
- Dairy free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Precooked bacon crumbles | 2 oz | the shelf-stable pouch kind, not refrigerated slices |
|---|---|---|
| Dried sliced potatoes | 1 1/2 cups | dehydrated slices or hash brown shreds, not instant flakes |
| Dried diced tomatoes | 1/3 cup | or 2 tbsp tomato powder |
| Dried carrot and celery | 1/4 cup total | |
| Dried leek or onion flakes | 2 tbsp | |
| Chicken bouillon | 2 tsp | |
| Bay leaf | 1 | |
| Olive oil | 1 tbsp | |
| Dried parsley | 1 tsp | |
| Salt and pepper | to taste |
Method
- Bring 700 ml of water to a boil with the bouillon and the bay leaf.
- Dump in the potatoes, tomatoes, carrot, celery, and leek. Stir once.
- Drop to a low simmer for 15 to 20 minutes. Stir every few minutes so the potatoes do not stick to the bottom.
- Test a potato slice. If it still has a crunch in the middle, add a splash of water and give it another five minutes.
- Pull the bay leaf. Stir in the bacon, the oil, and the parsley. Season and eat.
The original is a stove-top soup that starts by rendering raw bacon and sweating fresh vegetables in the fat. On the trail you have neither the fat nor the fridge, so the bacon comes precooked from a pouch and the oil does the job the drippings used to. Adding the bacon at the very end keeps it from going soft in twenty minutes of simmering.
Dried potato slices are the part that needs patience. They want real simmer time and more water than most one-pot dinners, which is why this is a soup and not a mash. Tomato and bouillon carry the flavor that fresh vegetables would have built, and the bay leaf earns its weight because there is nothing else in the pot with any depth.
Packing
All the dry vegetables, bouillon, and bay leaf go in one bag. Bacon and oil ride separately so the grease stays out of the dry mix.
Variations
- Swap the chicken bouillon for vegetable and leave out the bacon. It becomes a thinner soup, so add another spoon of oil.
- A handful of instant potato flakes stirred in at the end turns it from soup into stew.
https://www.tasteandtellblog.com/bacon-leek-tomato-and-potato-soup