camp meals

Tomato Soup From Powder

Tomato powder, dry milk, and two alliums. A hot lunch that weighs almost nothing.

calories
390
weight
3.2 oz
cal / oz
122
protein
11 g
serves
1, scales
prep
2 min
cook
5 min
total time
7 min
water
400 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.

  • Lunch
  • Dinner
  • Canister stove
  • Alcohol / Esbit
  • Liquid fuel
  • Backpacking
  • Car camping
  • Winter / snow
  • Bikepacking
  • Vegetarian
  • Gluten free
  • Nut free
  • One pot
  • Pre-mix at home
  • Shelf stable
  • Dump and stir

Ingredients

Tomato powder 1/3 cup dehydrated tomato juice or paste, ground fine
Full-fat milk powder 3 tbsp stands in for the heavy cream
Olive oil 1 tbsp dropper bottle
Garlic powder 1/2 tsp powder, not garlic salt
Onion powder 1/2 tsp
Salt 1/2 tsp add at the end, not the start
Grated parmesan 2 tbsp the dry shelf-stable kind

Method

  1. Boil 400 ml of water and pull the pot off the flame.
  2. Whisk in the tomato powder first, a spoonful at a time. Dumping it all at once gives you lumps you will not break up.
  3. Stir in the milk powder and parmesan off the heat. Boiling milk powder makes it grainy.
  4. Add the oil, then taste and salt. The tomato powder may already carry salt, so go in stages.
  5. Let it sit two minutes to thicken before you eat.

The original is a garden recipe: fresh juice cooked down, cream stirred in off the heat. Neither travels. Tomato powder is that reduction already done, and full-fat milk powder plus a little olive oil does what the cream did, which is round off the acid and add fat the soup otherwise has none of.

Order matters more than technique here. Tomato powder clumps if it hits water all at once, and milk powder turns grainy if you boil it. Kill the heat first, hydrate the tomato, then the dairy. Salt last, because dried tomato varies wildly in how much it already has.

Packing

Everything dry goes in one bag at home: tomato powder, milk powder, parmesan, garlic, onion. Salt and oil ride separately so you can adjust at camp.

Variations

  • A crumbled bouillon cube deepens it if your tomato powder is flat.
  • Broken crackers or a handful of instant potato flakes turn it into a thicker meal.
  • Swap the milk powder for coconut milk powder and drop the parmesan to make it dairy-free.

https://www.huntingpa.com/threads/home-made-tomato-soup.472