Share your homesteading projects
Make new homesteading friends
Ask homesteading questions
Blog your homesteading journey
Debbie Pribele
425 posts
and
17 followers
in over 1 year
in over 1 year
Cooking & Preserving #9: Ham Soup - frugal meals
This is
part 9
in a
29 part
series:
Cooking & Preserving
Ham Soup: a frugal meal on my homestead
Today, I bought a ham, with bone in, for just $10. Now that is a good price, here in Canada, but even better when I think about how many meals that I’m going to get out of it.
Making Soup With What You Have
Other than the meat, for this soup I used ingredients that I already had in the house, including some rather sad looking carrots.
I even poured in the last of some apple cider, just because. I wasn’t sure how it was going to taste, but it was worth a try. I could just water it down with more soup, if I didn’t like the flavour it added. (It was fine, by the way.)
Ingredients
- ham bone and chunks of the ham
- Carrots
- Onions
- Garlic
- The apple cider (definitely not necessary)
- Pepper and other seasonings
- Salt: add after, based on taste
- Water
- I could have added a bay leaf to help break down the proteins in the meat, but I forgot.
I pressure-cooked the soup in the Instant Pot for 20 minutes (plus a slow release).
Note: I could also do a slow cook on the stove top or in a slow cooker. I will probably do that for the re-heats.
Preserving the Leftovers
There was a lot of meat on that bone and I could have tossed it all into the soup but I preferred to spread it out over a few meals.
I put three packages of meat chunks into the freezer for future meals. I could have canned them or freeze-dried them, but was lazy and just tossed them into the freezer, to be eaten sometime this winter.
I put three packages of meat chunks into the freezer for future meals. I could have canned them or freeze-dried them, but was lazy and just tossed them into the freezer, to be eaten sometime this winter.
Besides the meat that went into the freezer, this pot of soup will give us about 4 meals. I can keep adding water, broth, and other vegetables during re-heats. Then, when we are tired of it, I will freeze-dry the leftover soup and store it in vacuum-sealed jars or Mylar bags with oxygen absorber packets.
Other Vegetables
Other vegetables that I may add during “re-heats” are:
- Parsnips
- Potatoes
- Cabbage
I will also add some freeze-dried broths with some water, to fill up the pot again.
With each re-heat, the soup will just get tastier and tastier!
The Cost
$10 plus power for the Instant Pot. Not bad for maybe a dozen meals by the time we are done!
I think that’s frugal. What do you think?
What’s your favourite frugal soup?
I think that’s frugal. What do you think?
What’s your favourite frugal soup?
- Debbie
a simpler life
