Recipes

This isn’t really a soup, but a successful experiment that would work well in a thermal cooker, as well as an electric crock pot. Amazing flavor, not much work. I saw a menu item called “Beer-Braised Carnitas” on a website, and wanted to try it without slow-cooking in melted lard. :)

1. I found a 3 lb bone-in chunk of pork butt (shoulder) on “reduced for quick sale.”
2. Sprinkle  with a little salt and pepper.
3. Leave the fat cap on.
4. Brown heck out of it on all sides in oil (This step can probably be skipped, but it makes it taste better)
5. While the meat is browning, stem and seed a couple dried Ancho and Pasilla chiles. These are not at all “hot” – kinda fruity flavor.
6. Toss them in your slow cooker along with handful of dehydrated onion flakes, ground cumin, some minced fresh garlic,  some dried oregano leaves, and about 2 bottles of beer (I’d go for a dark-ish lager. Yuengling Light was what was sitting around, and it worked admirably)
7. Put your pork butt into the slow cooker and add water or chicken stock to cover the meat about 2/3 of the way. (I had some that needed to be used in the fridge)
8. Either bring it to a boil and put it in the thermal cooker, or turn your slow cooker to High for about 4 hours, then go to low and ignore all day.

Shred up the meat – it will fall apart but still be moist and tasty. Great tacos/burritos/etc. Wonderful in omelettes or other dishes. Blend up the beer and veggies as a sauce or soup/stew base.  There’s nothing stopping you from adding onions, carrots and potatoes if the cooker is big enough, for an incredible stew.

The only downside? I have to go out and get more tortillas.

One of our favorite foods to “set back” are meals in a jar or meals in a Mylar bag.

I just opened a pint of our “Chicken and Rice Soup” and it’s delicious…even though it’s nearly a year old.

I’m not sure there’s any specific recipe to follow other than one you’d normally use if you were making traditional chicken & rice soup.

This particular recipe is for a pint jar.

One thing I have learned though is to put your herbs and spices in first to avoid them “coloring” your instant rice and freeze dried chicken, and making it look “greenish.”

For Chicken and Rice Soup, You Will Need:

• 2 Tbsp. Chicken bullion (or 3 cubes)
• ½ cup of my own dehydrated carrots
• ½ cup of freeze dried peas (from manufacturer of choice) must be freeze dried!!! Dehydrated peas won’t reconstitute for a long, long time…if ever!
• ½ cup of my dehydrated onion flakes
• 1 full cup of freeze dried chicken chunks (these were from Honeyville)
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1 tsp. coarse ground pepper
• 1 tsp. powdered cumin
• 1 cup of instant white rice (more if you can get it into the jar) putting the rice in LAST.
• 1 oxygen absorber – 100 cc (just my preference for additional safety)

Directions:

1. When you’re ready to cook, put mixture into light weight sauce pan, fill your pint jar with water to first ring, and pour into your saucepan.
2. Bring to a boil, cover and let set until rice is soft and other ingredients are reconstituted.
3. You can add a bit of powdered milk if you prefer a milkier-type soup.
4. You can also measure the ingredients into your jar and then pour it into a ziplock Mylar baggie (which I do for the ones we keep in our camp trailer) and store away.
5. Write what’s in it, date it, and put it in your storage pantry in a cool, dry, dark place.

I’ll pass along my mother’s bread recipe. My mother taught me this probably 35 years ago, and it is so simple to remember that you don’t even have to write it down.

It basically uses ‘1’ of everything, and with a little common sense, it’s easy enough to remember 1 of what.

You Will Need:

For each normal loaf of bread, or pan of rolls, use the following:

• 1 Cup  Water
• 1 Pkg  Yeast    (or teaspoon, if you use something other than the packets)
• 1 Tablespoon Honey   (or sugar, if you prefer)
• 1 Tablespoon  Butter  (shortening, whatever you prefer to use)
• 1 Teaspoon  Salt
• 1 Egg
• However much flour it takes

Directions:

Mix the water, honey and yeast and let it sit for a bit in a warm place before adding the egg, salt and butter and starting to mix in the flour.  We always mix it, knead it until it feels right, let it rise in the mixing bowl, punch it down and knead a bit just to get the air out of it, form it into loaves or rolls, let it rise again and bake it.

For anyone with any bread baking experience at all, this is probably the simplest recipe you’ll ever find and it works perfectly every time.

(submitted by Randy Bock)

Here’s another frugal and easy food choices for prepping, camping, and survival on a budget: Pan Fried Stuffing.

Learning how to cook some simple, hearty dishes is an important part of learning to be self-sufficient. It can also help you learn to utilize some items from your survival food list.

My daughter, Montana Storm, actually came up with how to make stuffing from leftover bread in a frying pan one day (she may have stumbled on this because all the pans were dirty!). I don’t know how, but became quite a hit in our family. And now I always have a bowl sitting on the back of the counter to catch the heels of bread, and leftover rolls and buns that will mold if not frozen or dried, for stuffing and meatloaf, meatballs, croutons, whatever.

Frying pan stuffing takes about five minutes to make and can be (depends on how you dress it up) oh so good!  It will fill the stomach, can be eaten alone (I like it with leftover gravy) or as part of a meal.

This is the basic recipe, from here it is all what you have available and your own personal taste palette.

Pan Fried Stuffing Recipe

Ingredients:

• 9-10 bread end pieces (white, wheat, French, rolls, buns, garlic)
• 3 tbsp. butter
• 1 c. boiling water
• 1/2 med. onion, finely chopped½ tsp. sage
• Salt and pepper to taste

Other optional ingredients I have used:

• 2 cloves garlic, minced or garlic salt
• 2 tbsp. freshly chopped parsley or dried
• More sage
• Marjoram
• Rosemary
• Italian seasoning
• 1 stalk celery, chopped
• Chives
• Raisins
• Walnuts
• Apples diced
• Cranberries
• Cooked potatoes, makes almost a hash
• Add bouillon to the water for more flavor

I also keep ice cubes of “drippings” from roasts, etc. to create a good soup stock, broth or gravy. Nuke a couple of these and it will make your stuffing oh so much more delicious!

1. Dice (or tear) bread ends and measure about 4 1/2 cups.
2. Melt butter in a large frying pan (or pot).
3. Add onion and whatever else you’ve decided to add.
4. Sauté over medium heat about 3 minutes.
5. Add whatever you’ve decided to add in the way of spices and stir.
6. Add boiling water or broth—yes, you can simmer this to make it even more savory and bring out the flavors in the spices.
7. Stir and bring mix to a boil.
8. Fork in the bread, turn off the stove (if using gas, move to another burner if using electric), stir and cover for about five minutes before serving.

Serves 4-6. Or two if this is the meal. ENJOY!

I would love to publish a series of “basic” recipes that people can add to, to taste. Just good frugal recipes, especially those with an eye toward using rice and beans.

Here’s a recipe I’ve kept for over 40 years, clipped from a newspaper article on unusual recipes.

Ingredients:

• all outer leaves and tails of vegetables
• all fruit peelings, stones and cores
• all saucepan and dish rinsings
• bread crusts
• remains of suet
• batter and milky puddings (but not jam or sweet puddings)
• cheese and bacon rinds
• skim milk
• sour milk
• remains of sauces (not sweet sauces)
• gravy
• vegetable water
• margarine (if liked)
• pepper and salt
• water

Directions:

1. Wash thoroughly all vegetable trimmings and leaves (do not use potato peelings); use outer leaves of cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, curly kale, lettuce, leeks and onions; tops and peelings of turnips, carrots, parsnips, swedes (rutabagas), kohlrabi.
2. Put all into a cooking box saucepan with plenty of water;
3. Bring to the boil, boil 20 minutes; add some or all of the other ingredients
4. Season to taste
5. Boil 10 minutes without removing cover and place in the cooking box 2 to 3 hours
6. Take out and rub through a sieve, and if necessary, reheat on gas ring

When times were hard, there were still ways to feed the family. What is the old saying?  “Hunger is the best seasoning” something like that.

I remember my mother telling about the Great Depression. Grandmother sent the oldest son out with his BB gun and a hundred BB’s. She told him to bring home 50 sparrows because that was to be their supper. Now a sparrow only has one bite (small bite) worth of meat on it but the lesson was….there is food to eat.

Food is my major concern when looking at my preps. I feel like I could just never have enough. At this point I have a large variety of types of food including common grocery store items as well as dehydrated and freeze dried.

I stopped by a local Sunbeam Bread Outlet store and saw a display of different bread mixes. What caught my eye was these were “Just add water“.

I picked up a few for $1.29 each and just tried the biscuit mix Sunday morning. Super simple to make. Like I said – “just add water” and then cook.

For the prepper this is a simple food prep that can be put back inexpensively requiring few supplies to prepare. Like most things – the true date which the product could not be eaten is likely well beyond the given date.

Anyways – the biscuits turned out great. My wife cut the dough a little thin but they tasted great.

There are many simple and cheap food preps out there that can make a world of difference when the time comes, and should definitely be included on any survival food list.