Dried Soup Mixes

I considered buying dried soup mixes to add to my food storage plan, but soon realized that I could probably just make my own.

Here are two basic dried bean mixes to use as building blocks for your own recipe:

Four Bean Dried Soup Mix
1 cup great northern beans
1 cup black beans
1 cup pinto beans
1 cup white beans

Nine Bean Dried Soup Mix
1 pound great northern beans
1 pound black beans
1 pound pinto beans
1 pound white beans
1 pound kidney beans
1 pound lentils
1 pound garbanzo beans
1 pound barley

These can be mixed and matched in various quantities. I prefer to keep them in equal parts, but they can be customized to individual tastes.

Adding spices to the mixes will help add flavor. Garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, salt, cumin, and chili powder are several nice options. In my experience garlic powder, onion powder, and chili powder work well if added in equal parts. When developing a dried bean mix recipe, I think it's better to start with smaller quantities of black pepper, cumin, and salt. The flavors can always be adjusted later on. Of course once you develop the recipe you like, your dried bean mix can be stored in a "just-add-water" state of readiness. A vacuum sealer works well for this purpose.

The addition of dehydrated vegetables to these basic bean mixes offer the ability to make hundreds if not thousands of different combinations based on what you might have on hand. You can also add pork, beef, chicken, venison, or tofu and just about anything else you can think of that might taste good.

As I fine tune my own dried soup spice mixes for a few different flavor profiles, I'll post the recipes here.