I love soups. I love easy to prepare soups like Knorr's. However, they are costly. Is there a way to make similar soups at home? How to you store your soups, dry dessicated ingredients? Or you make large quantities and refrigerate? I would prefer something easy to make and fresh. Any ideas?
Easiest soup is vegetable soup. I like tomato sauce soups. We have a small family that likes new meals daily, so I make small amounts whenever possible. I take my celery heart and other cooking vegetables, par boil it, add seasoning to taste and add my tomato sauce. With either rice or bread this simple vegetable soup is delicious, nutritious and filling. We also love noodle soup called saimin. To instant pkg. of ramen we add fresh veggies like mustard cabbage, white cabbage plus julienne spam. Enjoy! (I buy most everything on sale to save money too, makes it taste much more delicious.)
You can make soup form nearly anything. One of the best ways to make really cheap soup is to use up leftovers. Some bits of meat or veggies that are left go into a broth, and then you have soup. It's a great way to make food stretch further as well. One piece of chicken left and 3 people to feed? Chicken soup it is! Yes, I often make large batches and freeze some. As for buying soup cheaply, try dollar stores, Aldi, and hit the sales. Some dollar stores offer name brand soups. While one dollar may not be a ton cheaper than the regular grocery store, every little bit helps.
We have a stock of Knorr soup because it is the easiest to prepare especially when the people in the house are already hungry. But when I have time, I always resort ot my culinary skills. Our favorite is the Chinese egg noodle which is very cheap. It is sauteed in ginger and onion, adding water with a seasoning of salt then adding the egg noodles. When cooked, adding 1 egg (beaten egg is preferred) before serving adds not only flavor but nutrients as well. And the cost? Just half of the price of a packet of Knorr soup.
It's true that Knorr soup product can be quite costly but you can just use them as soup base and add your own flavor to the soup. With that, I can stretch one pack to two servings. The cheaper alternative is to use Knorr cubes to flavor your soup. For example, I can use Knorr beef cubes to put beef flavor on my soup and simply add veggies like cabbage. Most supermarkets here also sells soup cuts which are actually bony parts of meat. They considerably cheaper than regular meat cuts. There are days that I would really crave for sardines soup. I simply add water to sardines, a little salt or fish sauce, then egg noodles. These are great for cold days and makes me eat more rice than usual. Perhaps the cheapest soup I've prepared is onion soup. I would just boil onion for a few minutes and add salt or fish sauce.
Egg drop soup is the cheapest soup in existence. It is very tasty but you will save a lot of money making it. All you needed is an egg, water or chicken stock, salt pepper and green onions.