This is a survival food recipe with ingredients you can find 100% in the wild. This is absolutely priceless because you don’t have to stockpile the ingredients or carry any heavy food on your back if you’re in a bug-out situation.
This recipe is one of our favorites. We call it Mountain Man Vegetable Soup. Making this soup is not only easy, it’s a lot of fun, especially when you get your kids involved in gathering the wild ingredients.
First things first. To make Mountain Man Vegetable Soup, you must…
Gather Your Harvest
Although all these green ingredients might be growing right outside your back door or along your local street, they may be contaminated being so close to busy human zones. So we suggest taking a short hike.
Go somewhere away from easily contaminated places like public parks or busy highway shoulders. Gather a couple hats full of assorted wild greens and a tea cup of wild grass and other plant seeds.
Don’t step over any wild herbs! You will love adding a few fresh cuts of them into your soup, too.
Ingredient Examples for Your Mountain Man Vegetable Soup
- Dandelion leaves and flowers
- Mallow leaves
- Amaranth leaves and seeds
- Thistle leaves (trimmed of spikes with food sheers)
- Cat tail and bull rush shaft (white) hearts and underwater tubers
- Diced prickly pair pad or other cactus meat
- Crisp and moist Purslane arms (put in the pot last or used as a cold garnish)
- Wild asparagus tips (in spring)
- Arrowhead root underwater tubers (late spring and summer)
- Assorted grass seeds
- Wild mint or spearmint clips
- Clips of yellow and black mustard flowers and leaves
- Pepper grass leaves and flowers
- Wild onions and/or garlic
You get the idea! Gather a plethora of all the wild edible greens and herbs you can find, and throw them in.
Cooking Your Survival Food Recipe
Fixing up your Mountain Man Soup is just like making any other soup. Put in the toughest things first to boil longer and the most delicate go in last.
- Heat a quart of water (or more for a larger batch)
- Seasoning: Add a teaspoon or more of salt, a dash of several of your favorite seasonings and top it off with one or two teaspoons of honey or granulated sugar
- Fat: Add in a shot of lard, rendered wild game fat, a tablespoon of olive oil or butter. You can do without the fat or oil if you have none available.
- Husk the grass and wild seeds the best you can. Toast them in a dry pan or dry them in the sun, then scrub them between your palms and gently blow off the chaff (the cleaner the better). Toss the hard seeds into the boil first to let them soften while you prune and wash your assorted greens. This is a good time to throw in any jerky you may have on hand, but you don’t need it.
- Inspect, trim and wash your gathered greens and herbs.
- Once the seeds are soft, toss in the wild herb clips with your greens and let it all boil until tender to your taste.
- You can “pump up the volume” and flavor by adding some pieces of any precooked mystery meat.
- At home add a couple cups of beef or chicken broth… but it really isn’t needed to enjoy your wild greens soup!
- Let your soup simmer for 30 minutes to an hour until the greens are tender to your liking.
Now you’ve made your very own survival food — a delicate, tasty and very healthy “Mountain Man Vegetable Soup.”
For another delicious survival food recipe, checkout How to Make Tacos from Your Survival Food Stash…
If you don’t have time to cook emergency food in the wild and you’re surviving on the go, we love these zero prep food bars from 4Patriots.
