Hobo soup is a classic soup made by blending ingredients harvested by hobos or donated by kind people. It can contain various vegetables and sometimes meat. It was discovered by a Minnesota reporter in the 1950s and is now a brand. It can be expensive to buy, but recipes are available to make it at home. It is a healthy and satisfying soup that is perfect for chilly days.
Hobo soup is a classic soup, really predating hobo. Stories of the famous ‘Stone Soup’ in which three traveling soldiers trick a town into supplying ingredients to make the soup can be seen as an inspiration to the various itinerant travellers, who often passed from town to town by train. Hobo soup would essentially be a blend of ingredients, harvested by people kind enough to donate to hobos, or in some cases ingredients vacated (stolen) from people’s gardens.
The ingredients for any hobo soup will vary depending on what a company or person wants to put in it. Some things tend to be standard, like blue beans, onions, potatoes, and various herbs. Hobo soup might also contain carrots, celery, peppers, leeks or turnips. The soup the hobos made would depend a lot on the ingredients they had available. Occasionally a little salted pork, ham, bacon, or corned or corned beef chunks might flavor the soup. In general, however, many versions of the soup were and still are vegetarian and very tasty.
The soup is said to have been discovered by a Minnesota reporter in the 1950s. He decided to market the delicious soup he received from others while researching a story about hobos, and now Hobo Soup is still a brand as well as a type of soup. In the recipe for the canned version, artificial smoke flavoring is added, which for some is tasteless. It’s meant to replicate the taste of making this soup outdoors over campfires, but it’s just not quite the same.
It can be very difficult to find this soup in stores. Typically you’ll need to order cans online from places like the Vermont Country Store. Ironically, this soup which has generally come to hobos for free is very expensive compared to most store brands of soup. For example, you’ll pay just under $10 United States Dollars (USD) for three cans of the stuff. $10 USD at the grocery store can buy about 5 cans of soup, more if they’re on sale.
You might be better off making your own hobo soup, and you’ll find plenty of recipes to help you out. Most require sauteing some vegetables first, especially with a little onion before adding the other ingredients for the soup. You can use some bacon stir-fry and the fat from the bacon to give the soup more flavor. If you use dried blue beans, you need to start soaking them the night before. You can grab a little link here by using canned beans instead.
The end result is a delicious and healthy soup that in vegetarian form is very low in fat. Hobo soup can be a perfect and satisfying soup for chilly days or nights. It’s great served with crusty bread or use it as a soup for lunch or a snack for kids coming up from playing outside in the cold.
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