Canned Soups

Canned soup is a hot meal in ten minutes with nothing else in the house, which is the whole case for it. Low acid (tomato soup is the exception), so 5 to 10 years at full quality stored cool. The one decision is condensed against ready-to-eat, and in an outage that decision is about water.

Ready-to-eat soups need no water and are the right can for the bag and the first days of an outage; condensed soups are half the shelf space and twice the meals but need a can of clean water each. Chunky soups with meat and beans are the calories; broths and consommés are flavor for the rice. Tomato soup is high acid and rotates faster. Cream soups are sauce for the pasta and the canned chicken. Buy the ones you eat on a cold day, in case lots.

Cool, dry, dark and off the floor, between 50 and 70°F if you can manage it; twenty degrees cooler, 70 down to 50°F, roughly doubles how long the contents stay at full quality. Never let cans freeze (the seams can fail) and never store them over a furnace, in a garage or in a vehicle. Rotate first in, first out, with the buy date written on the lid. A dented can is fine if the dent is small and not on a seam; a deep dent, a dent on a seam, rust that pits the metal, or any bulge means the can goes unopened.

Look before you open: bulging ends, a leak, rust that has eaten into the metal, or a seam dent. Listen and look as you open: spurting liquid, a hiss outward, cloudy liquid where it should be clear, foam, or a foul smell. Any of those and the whole can goes, unopened if possible, into the trash where nothing can get at it, because the thing you are guarding against is botulism, which has no taste and no cure outside a hospital. A can past its date with a sound seal and a clean smell on opening is food.

A can of chunky soup is a meal of about 200 to 400 calories; a can of condensed cream soup over rice or pasta with a can of chicken is dinner for a family. Count the water: a family of four eating condensed soup twice a day uses close to five gallons of drinking water a week on soup alone, which is why ready-to-eat cans belong at the front of the shelf. A cup of broth is the thing that makes a sick person eat. Keep a dozen cans a person for the first two weeks of an outage and let the dry staples take over after.

Heat it on a camp stove, or eat it cold if you must; ready-to-eat soup is safe cold from the can. Condensed soup takes its can of water from the stored supply, so plan the cans against the gallons.

Shelf-life figures are from the Survival Foods field guide; fridge, freezer and pantry times are from the USDA cold and pantry storage charts. Run the look, smell, taste check before eating anything past its date.