Best and easy soups to make while "out there"

I was thinking what is the best and easy to make soup a woodsmen might make.
Rules are you can carry a few ingredients but they have to be light and simple.
If soups are not your thing then describe any meal one might make in the forst/bush/ what ever your country's terminology is for the outback.

yes i am Australian

Well, for Australia, if you're lucky enough to be by some water, you can find some stuff like yabbies, lemon grass, watercress, even witchetty, and some tree saps. I'm sure you could combine some of those to make a stew or soup.

For where I'm from, Great Lakes region, you might be able to find wild variants of regular fruits and vegetables, like cucumbers, blueberries, etc. There's also plenty of game around, like deer, squirrels, snakes, fish. Also plenty of edible plants, like dandelions, which can make an excellent tea. There are a lot of things in forests that are edible, if you know what to look for. Even some roots of plants, like cattails, can be good.

An easy soup would be a couple stockcubes mixed with hot water, could then also add things such as mixed veges/dried or fresh, strips of meat/jerky or even dried noodles for an quick instant meal.
Good to have with a homemade bread such as Damper cooked on a stick or in a camp oven.
Also nothing beats having fresh fish cooked after being caught the same day, which could also be used as a soup type meal.

Has anyone tried a rabit style soup or stew and if yes how did it turn out?
How did you make the stew/ soup tast good with minimal commodity (this is for any country btw)

Oyster stew,
Throw a can of oysters into a pot
Add as little milk as you want
Add anything else you want
Add salt
Eat
The ability to set up a base that can serve 2-4 people depending on how much more you add, with only two half sized cans is insanely fast and easy.

reply to post by syress


What soup or meal I would make would largely depend upon what the season is, as some edibles are fine to consume only at certain times of the year, or at the correct stage of the plants cycle. Assuming you are wanting to utilize what natural flora that nature provides.

I often bring along several prepackaged dried onion soup mix pouches. These are a great starter base for most any soup/stew, & it's light to pack in with you. To this, add what meat you may have, utilizing as much as possible. For rabbit specifically, I cut the rabbit into small serving size pieces. Browning lightly in the bottom of my pot. I don't drain the grease (there shouldn't be much anyways) as it imparts more flavor. Add water to cover & the package of dried onion soup mix. Cook over low fire until rabbit is done.

That is just a basic start I use, it's good as it is, but feel free to add available edible plants you may happen upon. (that you can positively i.d.) If available i forage for tubers, potatoes, leeks, & turnips.

A great thickener & flavor enhancer for stews is mushrooms, but the identification must be 100%, Mycology can be a dangerous endeavor.
I gather many mushrooms while in season, & use my food dehydrator to dry them, then i run them through a coffee grinder to pulverize them into a powder form. The powder takes very little space & a little goes a long way. I usually always take salt & my mushroom powder with me on my little adventures.

Oh & I ALWAYS have a good book on field identification with me, usually on the native flora/fauna of what area i will be in. I know a heck of a lot of edible plants in my area, but I don't by any means know them all. As such--my learning continues.

I find Potato soup easy to make, providing of course you have some potatoes.

Add as many as you want to a pan of warm to boiling water, make it easy on yourself, cut them into small chunks first.
Add a stock cube, either a meaty or veggie one, mainly for the herbs in them, add some pepper, a little salt just a pinch a panload.
And when they are soft , don't pour out the water just mush them up in the pan and hey presto tasty warming potato soup, I usually make it on November 5th ( UK firework night) , I also add an onion. Your basically making mashed potato but instead of emptying the water out you leave it in. You don't even have to worry aboput mashing them up too much, as I find a quick couple of mashes and they're done, plus you have the odd chunky bit to bite on.
Its filling and tasty. easy to make for lazy people. quick as no real fagging about.
Plus on the other hand you can follow this for any other 'tuber' vegetables.

But if your in real dire straights, a couple of stock cubes in a pint of water boiled will suffice, it'll be bland but at least it'll have SOME flavour.

Eternal soup is an easy way to fend off starvation for weeks at a time if you have a place to bug out. Basically fill a big pot full of water and boil everything you find. Grasses, wild onions, potato's, game meat etc. Just stay away from fish, it will spoil the flavor.

Good thing about this is that you just keep adding water and more ingredients as you find them. Even if you are down to only water after days of eating everything else, it will still have nutritional value as the water holds all the leftover nutrients of the boiled ingredients.

If your in the right area, and got a good gun, it will bring you in larger game that would fill you up right....you know, namely bear

To ward off scurvy (Vitamin C Def) you can boil pine needles in water for an hour, let cool, drink and it will keep you protected.

Well if i am really making in from scratch i guess i would just have to throw anything in that contains goodness and doesn’t take too much effort to find.

I’m from Britain so i guess it would be things like...

For meat content...

Rabbit
Squirrel
deer (if I’m lucky)

Veg

Dandelion root and leaves
Nettle
Pignut
Jews ear fungus
Wild Garlic
Silverweed
Sweet chestnut


Basically anything you can find that’s edible can be thrown in a pot of boiling water.

If I happen to be by the coast than I guess I can add things like...

Razor clams
Cockles
Limpets
Seaweed such as sea lettuce and Kelp

Again... anything you can get your hands on which you know are edible.

And if i can choose a few luxury items to include it would be things like...
Powdered stock
Any dried herbs
Chilli powder
Curry powder

Mmmmm

Oh... just to note... I only included one species of fungus because Jews Ear is one of the most easily identified fungus species... Other species can be very difficult to tell apart from their poisonous cousins so I normally stay away from them... until i have some training at least