I guess I'm not sure what you are asking - I found the following if you are looking for ideas. There are lots of recipes out there for various blends using different ingredients, maybe if these dont appeal to you some other blend might.

Here is a link that might be useful: lots of dry soup mixes

What a neat thing to do. I've dehydrated stuff for backpacking. I can see this working. The veggies and herbs should be straightforward enough. Try cooking then shredding and dehydrating some chicken. The thing is, lots of the recipes in the links use boullion cubes, which are very salty. I guess you can simply use less of them.

Let's see, if I understand the question, you're wanting to have all the ingredients available for soup?

I would say, find a recipe you like, then grow and preserve the ingredients in that recipe....or several.

I just made a huge pot of veggie soup from my freezer and dried goods.
Let see:
Onion, carrots (fresh)
celery, peppers, corn, asparagus, chard, garbanzo beans (freezer)
Cooked wheat berries
tomatoes (canned)
tomato powder (purchased)
beef broth (homemade, from freezer)
Rosemary, thyme, and a little more celery (dried)
Salt, 2 kinds of pepper

I will freeze in portions appropriate for my hubby & I.
I can add leftover meats later.........or not.
With the beans and rice, it's already got some protein.

Soup is very forgiving. Try a basic recipe and adjust to your taste. You can start by using the ingredients listed on one of your favorite mixes.

Deanna

Here's another link for dry soup mix recipes. Rather than use grocery store boullion cubes, you could order some low sodium chicken, vegetable, or beef granules from Redi-Base. That would make the final soup less salty.

http://www.redibase.com/products/index.php?arr1=0amp;itemid=13

Here is a link that might be useful: More dry soup mixes

I used to provision a backpacking program, and we used dried vegetables all the time. Bouillon is the base and you can buy low sodium kinds. I guess you could make your own but I never have. Then add whatever other dried ingredients you like--vegetables, herbs, even those little thin soup noodles. Then seal in ziplocks, will keep for a year, although the quality may go down somewhat towards the end. I used to eat this kind of stuff DAILY when I was backpacking--yum!

Welcome to the Cooking Forum, veggiefaery.

I dehydrate a lot of vegetables, and I know a couple of people here even dehydrate tomatoes, then grind them to a powder to make their own tomato powder.

I don't see any reason why you couldn't dehydrate your choice of vegetables and herbs, add any seasonings that you might enjoy and have soup mix. I've not dehydrated meat and I think most of those soup mixes tell you to add meat if you want it, so I'd probably stick with the veggies and seasonings and add meat as you make the soup.

I have made beef and venison jerky, but my homemade stuff requires freezing or refrigeration. Lots better than the commercial stuff, but it doesn't keep at room temperature.

I have no idea how you could make powdered beef or chicken or venison "base", I just make stock in huge batches and either can it or freeze it.

Annie

Hi Veggiefaery,

Here's a recipe from Heidi Swanson's 101 Cookbooks website. It's a very tasty base, but before you add the salt in the recipe, measure it out and ask yourself if you would ever use that much salt in anything you would cook. I used half and it was still salty. Just FYI. The flavor profile is quite nice however.

Homemade Bouillon
5 ounces / 150 g leeks, sliced and well-washed
7 ounces / 200g fennel bulb, chopped
7 ounces / 200g carrot, well scrubbed and chopped
3.5 ounces / 100 g celery
3.5 ounces / 100g celery root (celeriac), peeled and chopped
1 ounce / 30g sun-dried tomatoes
3.5 ounces / 100g shallots, peeled
3 medium garlic cloves
9 ounces / 250g fine grain sea salt
1.5 ounces / 40 g flat-leaf parsley, loosely chopped
2 ounces / 60g cilantro (coriander), loosely chopped

Place the first four ingredients in your food processor and pulse about twenty times. Add the next four ingredients, and pulse again. Add the salt, pulse some more. Then add the parsley and cilantro. You may need to scoop some of the chopped vegetables on top of the herbs, so they get chopped. Mine tended to want to stay on top of everything else, initially escaping the blades.
You should end up with a moist, loose paste of sorts. Keep 1/4th of it in a jar in the refrigerator for easy access in the coming days, and freeze the remaining 3/4 for use in the next month. Because of all the salt it barely solidifies making it easy to spoon directly from the freezer into the pot before boiling.
Start by using 1 teaspoon of bouillon per 1 cup (250 ml), and adjust from there based on your personal preference.
Makes roughly 3 1/2 cups.

Steve

Wow, no kidding, Steve! That's a ton of salt. I would start with a teaspoon of salt and go by taste after that. With all of the veggies, I would think you would end up around 2 teaspoons of the salt.

Thanks everyone for your responses! They've all been so helpful. I've been sick with a terrible cold the past few days and this is the first day I've felt well enough to get out of bed. Even if it is almost summer time, the soup recipes sound good when I am so sick.

Even if I have more optimism than cooking skill, I think I will try making a dry soup mix base. I had never thought about dehydrating tomatoes before. I wonder if I could do the same with peppers. I guess there will be a lot of experimenting this summer.