With winter, cold and flu season upon us, our second preparedness challenge for November is to buy canned and dry soup for food storage. It’s best to keep a combination of canned soup, dry soup and broth in your pantry for everyday cooking, and for times you don’t have water to make homemade soup. Canned and dry soups typically go on sale during November and December. This makes stocking up simple and economical.

CANNED SOUP
- Decide how many cans of soup, dry soup mixes, and broth you use in a month or three months.
- You may prefer bouillon powder or cubes instead of canned broth. Buy what you like so you will use them.
- Tomato-based soups have a short shelf-life of about 18-24 months compared to other soups which may have a 3-5 year shelf-life. Check best buy dates.
- Prepared soups are great for emergency use because they are easy to heat and don’t require water.
- Find great soup recipes at Campbells.com/kitchen/recipes.
DRY SOUP
- If you store dry soup, you need to store extra emergency water.
- Some dry soup ideas are ramen soup, Lipton onion soup, 15-bean soup, split pea soup, and Bear Creek Soup mixes. Walmart has reasonable prices.
- For long-term soup, Rainy Day Foods sells ABC Soup Mix. Augason Farms sells a Creamy Potato Soup mix and Cheesy Broccoli Soup Mix.
- You can make homemade soup with Latter-day Saint 1″ Spaghetti Bites, dehydrated Carrots, and dehydrated Onions. Thicken with Potato Flakes. Find at store.churchofjesuschrist.org
Keep a little soup in your pantry just in case.
Stock up your way!
Valerie Albrechtsen
The Food Storage Organizer
Find my emergency preparedness items in my Etsy shop.
