by Texas Homesteader ~
Come see how I put together what I call ‘Endless Soup’. It’s simple, it’s cheap and it’s delicious.
Plus by using this method we both have hot, healthy lunches for a week!
Mealtimes On The Homestead
Suppers at our Homestead are always planned, prepared and served. RancherMan & I sit down together for our evening meal.
But lunches aren’t an official affair. Lunch is always fend-for-yourself style. Typically for summertime lunches RancherMan & I each just grab a quick sandwich of some kind whenever we get hungry.
But in the cold winter months I hunger for something a little more substantial. And something hot.
I really enjoy soups in the winter for hot and healthy nutrition. It just seems to warm me from the inside out.
Assembling An Endless Soup Pot
I start with a meat base by cooking some kind of meat seasoned with onions and garlic. The simplest option is just using ground meat, whether beef, venison or wild pork.
After cooking & draining the meat I start assembling my soup. First I’ll add a base of homemade broth.
This will be whatever broth I have available – chicken, turkey, beef or veggie. I’m not picky here, and I’ve always got homemade broth available!
Finally we’re ready to start adding in the vegetable portion of our soup.
Soup Using Food Needing To Be Used Up First
On this day I begin my veggie additions by raiding the fridge for leftover vegetable sides from last night’s meal. This assures leftovers are used first to eliminate food waste possibilities.
Then I add several different kinds of fresh vegetables from the fridge. They’re the most perishable and again, I’m striving to eliminate food waste. 
If needed I’ll top it off with preserved vegetables, whether canned, frozen or previously dehydrated.
And lastly I add a handful of rice. I love a brothy soup but RancherMan prefers less broth. So by adding a handful of rice the excess broth is soaked up.
When the soup is finally comprised of all the ingredients I like, I simmer it until the rice is tender, about 20 minutes. This simmer time will also rehydrate any dehydrated vegetables I may have added to the soup pot.
Now we’re ready to enjoy a steaming bowl of soup for lunch. I like to toast some rye or homemade Honey-Oat Bread to go with it. Then we dig in! It’s a very hearty yet healthy meal.
When we’re finished with lunch the remaining soup is stored in the fridge. It awaits the next day when it will provide yet another lunch for us. But I’ll be adding to it…
Replenishing The Daily Soup Pot
The next day when lunchtime rolls around I’ll pull the soup out of the refrigerator and stir in a can of veggies, juice & all. This adds another serving to the soup. Plus I love the blending of flavors that results. 
Then we repeat each day until close to the end of the week when I stop adding new veggies to the pot. In a day or so we finish consuming all the soup that remains.
At first my endless soup is pretty meat-heavy, a favorite for RancherMan. But as the week progresses it gets more veggie heavy, my fave.
So we’re both pacified, not to mention fed hot healthy meals all week long.
The Benefits of Endless Soup:
-
- Makes use of anything waiting to be eaten so it doesn’t go to waste.
- Is different every time based on what’s available in the freezer/fridge/pantry.
- Has much less salt & preservatives than commercial soup that’s purchased at the store.
- Made right in your own kitchen for just pennies!
What About ‘Freezer Soup’?
I’ve heard of others doing something similar by having a special container in the freezer where everything left over after supper gets added. You accumulate all leftovers in that container until it’s full enough to make it into a pot of soup.
I’ve done that too. Although it works well, I prefer the endless soup method. This method keeps RancherMan & me in bone-warming lunches all week long.
But either method results in very little actual kitchen time – you KNOW I love that!
SUMMERTIME METHOD:
Endless soup isn’t just for winter nutrition, it can be enjoyed in the summer months too!
I can add extra veggies to my diet & putting the excess garden veggies to good use by making an endless summer-vegetable soup.
Typically I’ll use vegetable broth to rehydrate my dehydrated cabbage & purple onions and also to lightly cook fresh summer squash, zucchini, green beans, asparagus beans, chopped tomatoes and a small handful of whole wheat pasta to soak up the extra broth.
At the end I’ll stir in some chopped fresh basil & sage from the garden too. It’s the most delicious fresh summertime soup you can imagine!
Y’all know how much I hate food waste! I do whatever I can to make sure none of my healthy garden produce is going to waste.
And this endless soup means lunches for the week are heat-n-eat fast!
~TxH~
This post categorized in 
Tagged in 
Our Favorite Soups
Soup Tips
- Endless Soup For A Weeks’ Worth Of Lunches
- Faster, EASIER Homemade Broth In An Instant Pot
- (Pressure Canning Broth)
- 10 Delicious Quick Soup Ideas
- Beef Stew Dry Seasoning Mix
Beef Soups
Chicken Soups
- Chicken & Dumplings
- MYO Cream Of Chicken Soup In A SNAP!
- Easy Chicken Broth
- Planned Leftovers: Chicken Tortilla Soup
Vegetable Soups
See All Our Soup Recipes
Other Meal Ideas
Ground Meat
- Poor Man’s Stuffed Steak (hamburger)
- Award-Winning Cowboy Chili
- Savory Meatloaf
- Lazy Cook’s Chile Relleno
- Slow Cooker Enchilada Casserole
- Meat-Stuffed Ravioli
- Taco-Stuffed Bell Peppers
- Meat & Cheese-Stuffed Zucchini Boats
- Quick Southwest Quesadillas
- Taco Spaghetti – Simple 1-Pot Meal
- Cheesy Spaghetti Squash Lasagne Cooked In Its Shell
Chicken/Poultry
- Homemade Chicken & Dumplings
- Chicken Pot Pie
- Leftover Chicken Into Quick Chicken Fried Rice
- Healthier Crispy Fried Chicken in an Air Fryer
- Slow-Cooker Spicy Sticky Chicken
- Pecan Smoking A Whole, Spatchcock Turkey
Cooking Tips
Instant Pot
- Instant Pot Goulash – Comfort Food FAST!
- Homemade Tamales (includes Instant-Pot shortcut)
- Instant Pot Spaghetti
Air Fryer
See All Our Recipes
C’mon by & sit a spell! Come hang out at our Facebook Page. It’s like sitting in a front porch rocker with a glass of cold iced tea. There are lots of good folks sharing!
And you can also follow along on Pinterest, on Twitter, or on Instagram
To receive an email when a new blog post goes live it’s EASY to
Subscribe to our blog!
I love making soup with whatever we have on hand, especially to use up fresh produce. It drives me crazy when all the broth is gone the next day. You have a great idea for making leftovers into something new.
I really love this idea! I’m fairly new to growing my own veggies, dehydrating, and trying to reduce our use of processed ingredients, and I feel like I learn something new every time I visit your website. Thank you so much for linking up with us at Your Turn To Shine!!
Great idea! It is hard to find time to cook a healthy meal from scratch every day. So the idea of making a great soup once, and adding to it all week, making it different each day is wonderful! I usually cook once or twice each week, have left overs the next day, and freeze the rest in individual serving containers for future reference. I like your idea better as nothing in the fridge will go to waste!
This sounds wonderful and is making me hungry! Varying the soup every day and giving it a little different flavor will keep it interesting plus it’s a perfect way to use what you’ve grown in your garden during the summer. AND it’s super healthy! What more could anyone ask for? I will give this a try! Thank you for posting!!
This is a fantastic idea, and I love how it lends the opportunity to use things up and get a little different flavor each day. It makes me want to head to the kitchen and get a big pot of soup going.
I’m sure it’s so satisfying to used the veggies and herbs you worked so hard to preserve last summer.
Thanks so much for sharing and bringing your post to Wake Up Wednesday.
Pinning, Tweeting, & Sharing on FB.
I love this idea but have been concerned about how long it’s safe to keep things in the fridge.
Of course each person should use their best judgement based on the freshness of the ingredients they’re adding Laura, but I typically keep mine going for about 5 days. The soup’s meat heavy early in the week but by the end of the week there’s not much meat left & the soup’s pretty veggie heavy at that point. And since I’m pulling out of it every day and then adding veggies to it every day it’s always worked beautifully for us.
Ah, this is the way we cook in our home to make our lifestyle doable! I loved reading that other people out there are stretching and embracing leftovers instead of preparing gourmet meals each night (who has the time and finances for that kind of food on a working farm?). Thanks for spreading this idea and sharing it on the Art of Home-Making Mondays!
I make soups but like your idea of adding to it each day! I worry about how long it will be good doing this? Five days maybe?? Nancy
Nancy, my soup lasts about 5 days (depending upon how much meat is in it.) Although it starts out pretty meat-heavy, there’s not much meat in the soup by the end of the week, it’s mostly veggie at that point.
At our house I solved the problem of our different soup preferences (he likes his salty & stew-like; I like more herbs, plenty of broth & loaded with vegetables). I make a large pot of soup base very much like you do, but split the soup between 2 pots. I then add specifics to each pot to customize. This works very well for us–the daily additions to the pots are also customized.
Your soup looks Amazingly Wonderful.
You can do almost anything with soup stock, it’s like a strong foundation. When you have the right foundation, everything tastes good.
Endless soup is a great idea1 I make freezer soup but I call it “free soup”.
We love a good pot of soup! I try to make a pot once a week for dinner and then we use the leftovers for lunch. Thanks for sharing this with us at the HomeAcre Hop!
Love this idea – we eat a lot of soup – I’ll give your idea a try! I appreciate you sharing with Home and Garden Thursday,
Kathy
I love soup, especially when it is cold! I wish spring would come and we could move on to salads though 🙂
Thanks for sharing at the HomeAcre Hop!
Thank you! You’ve just solved my dinner meal planning for weeks I know will be busy ones. I’m sharing this on my Facebook page.
This is soooo smart!!! Thanks for sharing! I love less kitchen time too, and soup is always good! I’ll have to give this a try. 🙂
My husband does something similar with his crock-pot stew, but I–the soupmaker of the family– have never tried this. Thanks for the inspiration!
Awesome! I love soup too and this would be a great way to reduce the left over population in the fridge 🙂 I like a combo meat and veggie so I would be happy all week long!
I love the idea of saving leftovers in the freezer for a soup. I started saving scrapes of veggies to make a broth, I’ll have to start doing this also. I agree with Rancher Man, a nice hearty soup with not a lot of broth is my kind of stoup, no not a typo. That is what we call a soup that is more like a stew, thanks for sharing this on Tuesdays With a Twist.
I love homemade soup!! This is a great way to use up everything! Thanks for sharing at TTF!
Oh I have always made endless soup and here on the farm it is a satisfying meal that gives us all the we need to sustain our busy days. Love rye bead with mine too. B