Name: Dried mushroom and bulgur soup
Prep time: 12 min
Total time: 40 min
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients: 25 g Mushrooms (dried); 100 g Bulgur wheat; 1 pack Carrots (tinned); 20 g Onion (dried, flakes); 10 g Vegetable stock cubes; 3 g Mixed herbs (dried); 25 ml Olive oil; 2 g Black pepper (ground); 10 ml Cider vinegar

Dried mushroom and bulgur soup

An established dish converted to shelf-stable ingredients. Every substitution is documented below.

How long it keeps

About 6 months, set by Mushrooms (dried).

Indicative, for planning a build before you buy. The answer for a pack you already own is the best before date printed on it, and that only holds if it has been stored as the label says.

Serves

Burners

Pans

Water

1.4 L

Active

12 min

Total

40 min

Ingredients

Twenty-five grams of dried mushrooms weigh nothing and make a stock with more depth than any cube. The soaking liquid is the soup: that is the whole trick, and pouring it away is the mistake.

Cover the mushrooms with 1.2 litres of just-boiled water. Fifteen minutes.
Lift them out, squeeze them over the bowl, slice them. Keep the liquid, but leave the last centimetre behind, grit settles there.
Oil in the pan, dried onion for three minutes until sweet-smelling. Herbs and pepper for thirty seconds.
Mushroom liquid in with the stock cube and the sliced mushrooms. Simmer 15 minutes.
Bulgur in for the last 10 minutes. Drained carrots for the last 3, any longer and they disintegrate.
Vinegar off the heat.

It thickens as it stands and will be almost a stew by the time you have washed up, which is not a fault.

Serves 4.

What this was adapted from

Eastern European mushroom and barley soup, with bulgur standing in for pearl barley

pearl barley, simmered 45 minutes → bulgur wheat, added in the last ten

Barley is the authentic grain and it is three-quarters of an hour of fuel. Bulgur is parboiled before sale, so it thickens the soup the same way in ten minutes. The texture is softer and less chewy, which is the honest cost.
fresh onion, carrot and celery → dried onion and tinned carrots

A soffritto is the base of the original. Dried onion rehydrated in the fat does most of that work; tinned carrots go in late because they are already soft and will collapse if cooked from the start.