Soups have long been the mainstay of any cook who is trying to stretch the larder to feed more people, or the budget to save money. Soup is the basic survival food. And for that reason (among many others), it should always have a place on your survival food list.
This is the first in a series of Survival Soup recipes that you can make from commonly stored foods, your garden in season, foraging wild edibles, or what is seasonally plentiful on the homestead.
This recipe comes from a post written by MsKYprepper “Feed a Family of Four for 1 Year for Less Than $300” and can be seen here: https://seasonedcitizenprepper.com/feed-a-family-of-4-for-1-year-for-less-than-300/
Don’t have time to prepare and cook soup? There are some really great dry soup mixes available. Oregon Lakes has 15 different recipes, and is all natural. See all their flavors here.
Recipe #1 Rice & Beans Soup
Measure out:
- 8 oz (1 cup) of rice
- 2 oz (1/4 cup) of red kidney beans
- 2 oz (1/4 cup) of pearl barley
- 2 oz (1/4 cup of lentils
- 1 oz (1/8 cup) of split green beans
- 1 oz (1/8 cup) of chick peas/garbanzo’s
(The chicken bouillon and salt are optional, but highly recommended!)
Put the ingredients into 6 quarts of water, bring to a boil and then simmer for 2 hours. When I cooked this it didn’t thicken up for me in two hours, but once I turned the burner off and let it sit for a while it did thicken up into a very hearty soup!
If you decide to make this soup, I would suggest going to 1/4 to 1/2 of the recipe and adding liberal amounts of salt and chicken bouillon. Think of it as a very hearty chicken and rice soup with beans, etc. adding protein. This is a very basic recipe that you can add nearly any meat, including jerky, too. It will fill your belly and stick to your ribs. MsKYprepper said it is especially good with cornbread.
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I bought all of the ingredients (3 lb. bag of rice and 1 lb. bags of the rest) for less than $10 at Walmart. If I purchased it in larger quantities, it would cost far less for the same amount, but I wanted to try it before I committed myself to larger quantities, and I’m glad I did! If necessary, I’m pretty sure it would feed us (2 adults) for at least a week, maybe two! No, it may not have all the calories you need, but it is meant to be a base for your foraging other foodstuffs from your garden or wherever.
I decided to vacuum seal this, with the recipe, as a gift for one of the kids, to start them on emergency food storage.
Then, to keep it all together in a package they could stash almost anywhere, I put it in a clear baggy that I got with some sheets I just bought – I love to repurpose things!
How To Feed a family of 4 for 1 year, for less than $300
This plan is the fastest, cheapest and easiest way to start a food storage program. It has become semi “internet famous”, and is appropriately referred to as “survival soup.”
Think about this:
- You are done in a weekend.
- There are no hassles with rotating. Pack it and forget.
- It’s space efficient – everything is consolidated into a few 5-gallon buckets.
- You’ll sleep content, knowing that you have a one-year food supply on hand for your family should you ever need it.
With the exception of dairy and Vitamin B12, this bean soup recipe will fulfill your basic nutritional needs. It won’t fill all of your wants, but using this as your starting point, you can add the stuff that you want.
All of the food and storing supplies listed below plus 2 55-gallon recycled barrels to be used for rain catchment cost me $296, including taxes. I purchased rice, bouillon and salt from Sam’s Club. You can buy small bags of barley at the grocery store, but if you don’t mind waiting a few days, special ordering a bulk bag from Whole Foods was cheaper.
All of the beans I purchased from Kroger’s in 1-lb bags. Supplies can be purchased online, although it is usually possible to find more opportunistic deals “on the ground.”
Supplies you need for Survival Soup:
- 8 – 5-gallon buckets with Gamma lids
- 8 – large Mylar bags with 2,000 cc oxygen absorbers
- A handful of bay leaves
- 90 lbs. of white rice
- 22 lbs. of kidney beans
- 22 lbs. of barley
- 22 lbs. of yellow lentils
- 5.5 lbs. of split green peas
- 5.5 lbs. of garbanzo beans
- 1 lb. of salt
- A big box of beef bullion and chicken bouillon.
- A measuring cup
How To Store It
Install the gamma lids on the bucket and insert mylar bags. Place 2 or 3 bay leaves in the bottom and fill the buckets, adding more bay leaves after each 1/3 to full. Place an oxygen absorber in the top. Label buckets with the contents and date. Fill:
- 3 buckets with rice (shake it down good. Get it all in there!)
- 1 bucket of kidney beans
- 1 bucket of barley
- 1 yellow lentils
- In 1 bucket, store the split green peas, garbanzo beans, salt, measuring cup and bouillon (I removed the bouillon from the box and vacuum sealed it as bouillon contains a small amount of oil.).
- Yep, that’s a total of 7 buckets, so far.
I place a broom handle across the bucket and wrap the ends of the mylar bag over the broom handle to give me some support. Then, slowly and smoothly, run a hot iron over the mylar bag to seal all except the last 2 inches. I press out as much air as possible before sealing the remaining 2 inches.
Make sure your mylar is completely sealed from end to end. Now, stuff the bag into the bucket and rotate the gamma lid into place. This will protect your food for roughly 25 years. You’ll have excess mylar bag at the top. Don’t cut it off, that way if you have to cut it open to get into it, you have enough bag remaining to reseal.
Where To Store Your Soup Supplies
It’s pretty easy to find a place for 7 to 8 5-gallon buckets, even in the smallest of apartments. You could:
- Discard a set of box springs and lay a kid’s mattress on top of the buckets
- Line the back of a large closet with the buckets
- Make a couch table by stacking buckets two high between the couch and the wall. The buckets are about 6” taller than the back of the couch. Add a shelf and drape and it looks fine; a convenient place for a lamp and books.
Get creative!
Cooking Your Survival Bean Soup
Measure out
- 8 oz of rice
- 2 oz of red kidney beans
- 2 oz of pearl barley
- 2 oz of lintels
- 1 oz of split green peas
- 1 oz of chick peas/garbanzo’s
Add 6-7 quarts of water. Add bouillon or salt to taste. Then add any other meats, vegetables, potatoes or seasonings you have on hand. Bring to a boil and then let simmer for two hours. You should have enough to feed 4 people for two days. This is thick and hearty. You will be warm on the inside and full with one large bowl. Kids usually eat half a bowl.
After The Emergency Is Over
This system allows you to open the Mylar bags, retrieve as much of the ingredients as is needed and then reseal everything after the emergency has passed. Just be sure to replace the ingredients used so that you always have a one-year supply.
Other Survival Food Items I Would Want (Keep These in The 8th bucket)
This list isn’t included in the $300. This falls into the “what I want” category. As money and resources became available, I’d just go crazy adding all of my indulgences, starting with coffee! You can add what you want, but I’d fill it with:
- Dry onion. Let’s face it, what’s bean soup without onion! Sprinkle on the onions just before serving.
- “Just add water” cornbread mix packets. I just can’t eat bean soup without cornbread.
- Beef jerky and Vienna sausages. Add protein and zest to the bean soup
- Instant oatmeal. Do you really want bean soup for breakfast? Freeze the oatmeal for 3 days before packing to kill any bugs.
- 10 lbs of jellybeans. Now, don’t laugh – it’s a bean. Jellybeans don’t melt like chocolate might. The high sugar content is quick energy, and a morale booster – with just enough of a high to help you over the really bad days. Easter is about here – stock up!
Before Filling Your Final Bucket
Buy small bags of the ingredients and fix a big pot of bean soup for dinner. Eat the leftovers the second night, and 3rd night, until it’s all gone. Find out now – rather than later – what your family might like to add to it. Anything tastes great the first meal, but quickly becomes boring after the 3rd or 4th repeat.
Don’t wait until the emergency happens to discover what you SHOULD have stored in your 8th bucket. … Maybe some Beano!
Love this recipe! Do you know how long the ingredients will last in the sealed plastic? Be sure to tell the recipient how long it will store. I think to give as a Christmas gift, you could place all the pouches in a leftover popcorn tin from last Christmas. That would be a great way to store it so rodents, etc. can’t get to it.
Great idea Dare on the tin container. Thank you! :-D
Also, it might not be a good idea to seal the items in the plastic bag they come in for safe long-term storage. Didn’t I read somewhere there are chemicals in the plastic bags foods come packaged in, and it is only intended for short-term shelf life before use? It might be prudent to take the food out of the bags and seal them in their own Mylar bag; labelled of course.
Understand this recipe that’s been floating around on the internet has less than 200 calories a day for the length of time it’s supposed to feed a person or group of people.
You will die of starvation depending on this even supplimented with basic meat. Remember an ounce of lean meat has roughly 30 calories per ounce. That puts a rabbit at around 900 calories. You’ll need this soup plus two rabbits, including brains and organ meats, a day per person if you’re at all active.
@ Dare, I never thought about the safety of the bags the food came purchased in. Thank You!
@ Math Prepper, No soup is going to have the amount of calories you need to sustain life forever. But it will go a long way in filling your belly and helping you find more calories. :-D
Survival food, especially soups and stews, etc. is a bit of a strange problem. You need the right mix of calories and various other nutrients to keep you alive. You also need flavor and “comfort” to keep you Human. You could stay alive for years on bags of glucose, amino acids and vitamins mainlined into your arm, or, maybe, even issue MRE’s. It would not be at all pleasant. There was a reason for the hot sauce and cigarettes in ‘Nam-era C-ration packs. They made it all a little bit more tolerable.
You can probably manage to choke down that MRE chili-mac and that “food bar”, if you know there is a tasty, filling pot of soup waiting for you when you get back ‘home’.
I’m looking for my soap box. Oh, here it is. I have lived near the Eastern Ky border, in WV. (but now I have moved into the big time in Western Ky) I have know many people that have lived into their 90’s and lived on pinto beans and fried potatoes, with biscuits or cornbread. On the weekends they would go down town to their freezer locker (no, most people didn’t have home freezers)and pick up some chicken or pork chops. Breakfast, biscuits and gravy and if their chickens survived the hawks, eggs. They didn’t take vitamins and supplements, but they survived.
Old people don’t need all those calories. I’m big enough, but if I ate that many calories, I wouldn’t be able to get through the door. My nutritionist at the VA told me I didn’t need near that many calories.
Sprouting 1999 pinto beans? (Y2K beans) No way. I have tried it. I did run them through my wheat grinder and made bean flower. I use it for soup thickener and I have read that you can make a mush and make refried beans. Mixed with wheat flower, you can make bread. I would appreciate any input as to this use if beans have this “poison” in them that need to be washed out.
OK, I need help. It sounds like everyone seals their food in Mylar bags inside a 5 gallon bucket. Why cant I just place the food directly into the bucket, toss in the O2 absorbers and seal the lids. Why the Mylar bags also?
I might add that if you stored all the different buckets as MsKy says, you don’t have to use all of them in her recipe. You could use just one of them for something. Pea soup is great by itself.
@ John R, somebody smarter than me is going to have to answer you on the mylar. I think it is food safety reasons because the plastic has so many chemicals in it that the buckets aren’t food safe for long term storage – even those rated food safe for short term storage.
Yes, we will be coming up with all kinds of bean recipes! There is absolutely no way I would want to eat one bean soup recipe day after day after day.
Don’t know about your question on the pinto beans either never even heard of pinto bean poison.
I too lived in eastern KY for a short while (and yes, meat on a weekend was a luxury) and I think you are right about older people especially not needing so many calories.
@ Wyzyrd, you are oh so right about flavor! What is life without a little spice!
Bev, I was referring to what ever that “stuff” was that is in beans that soaking and then rinsing washes out.
As far as a popcorn can, I use mine as a faraday cage. I have my crank radios, and ham radio with bubble wrap to keep the radios from coming into contact with the can.
@ John R, oh soaking! That is just for digestibility of the beans and cooking time. You can even add a TB of baking soda to the soaking water to make them more digestable and some salt to help them absorb the water a bit more.
Great idea on the faraday cage! :-D
Everybody calls wifey “the soup lady”! I love soups and make just about every combination I can think up…LOL My main focus is to keep lots and lots of spices, and lots of dehydrated veggies as well as canned ones. Add some different spices and they all taste different. We don’t store alot of beans, except those we buy in cans. We enjoy rice and corn more, so that’s what we set back. Only needing to feed two people, soups and chili are a great quick meal for us. Especially if I make them “stoups” (thick!) that can be ladled over rice, biscuits or corn meal. Thanks for the recipes!!!