Since Mike and I love cooking so much, we found various ways to incorporate cooking-related ideas into our wedding. One example is the wedding favors we created.
Those who have mentioned it at all have all indicated they loved the soup.
We've decided to post the recipes we used in case you want to ever make the soup again. While we're at it, we'll give you an exclusive behind-the-scenes look into this particular kitchen adventure.
Love Soup Mix Jars
For our Love Soup Mix, we were inspired by two different allrecipe.com recipes:
Here's what you need to know to put together one Love Soup Mix jar as either the regular or gluten-free (GF) variant.
Materials and Ingredients per Jar
- 1 pint-size canning jar, cleaned
- funnel for pouring ingredients into jars (We made one by rolling a piece of parchment paper into a funnel shape and taping it together.)
- 1 tablespoon ground dehydrated veggies (Our veggie mix consisted of air-dried carrots, onions, whole kernel sweet corn, celery, green beans, green and white leeks, green bell peppers, and red bell peppers.)
- 1 tablespoon dried parsley
- 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 1 teaspoon granulated garlic
- 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
- 1 teaspoon dried sage
- 2 tablespoons dried minced onion
- 1/4 cup dried split peas
- 1/4 cup macaroni (GF: omit)
- 2 tablespoons (1/8 cup) barley (GF: omit)
- 1/4 cup dried lentils (GF: add 2 tablespoons extra)
- 3 tablespoons long-grain white rice
- 1/2 cup (or so) tricolor rotini pasta (GF: use 1/2 to 3/4 cups gluten-free pasta such as quinoa pasta)
Directions for Assembling the Jars
- Line up each of the opened jars.
- Layer each ingredient in the order that is listed above.
- Close each jar, and attach a tag with the directions that are provided in the recipe blog post.
He said
To be a good cousin to my gluten-free relatives, I wanted to offer a gluten-free variant of this. We made 6 gluten-free jars, using up a box and a half of quinoa pasta. While I recommend following a strict assembly line pattern to make these (fill all jars with each ingredient before proceeding to the next ingredient), I broke the assembly line into two pieces to avoid contaminating the measuring cups and spoons with gluten. So after adding the split peas, I completed and closed the gluten-free jars before returning to the macaroni and barley in the original recipe.
She said
We spent most of an entire weekend putting together all of the soup jars for the wedding. This included taste testing the two recipes, plus going on a store hunt for a few more ingredients when we were running low near the end. Mike did most of the jar filling himself, and I designed and printed ingredient/instruction tags. We put together about 120 in all. While I can see us creating more of these jars in the future at some point, I don't think we'll do so on such a large scale; it became a bit, well, tedious after a while. We were thrilled with how they turned out, though. It was so worth all the trouble, and I think it made for a memorable, useful wedding favor.
These Love Soup Mix Jars serve double duty: they look pretty filled with all of the different colored layers of ingredients, and they hold the main ingredients for an amazing soup. I can't wait to cook more of this soup. It's perfect for a winter weekday meal.
Bean in Love Soup Jars
Our Bean in Love soup mix was adapted from Be Prepared Five-Bean Soup Mix on allrecipes.com. Like with the Love Soup mix, we didn't follow it exactly, because we preferred to allow each recipient to choose the saltiness, and to offer vegetarian-compatible mixes.
Here's what you need to know to put together the Bean in Love Soup jars.
Materials and Ingredients per Jar
- 1 pint-size canning jar, cleaned
- funnel for pouring ingredients into jars (We made one by rolling a piece of parchment paper into a funnel shape and taping it together.)
- 2 tablespoons dried minced onion
- 1 tablespoon dehydrated veggies, ground (Our veggie mix consisted of air-dried carrots, onions, whole kernel sweet corn, celery, green beans, green and white leeks, green bell peppers, and red bell peppers.)
- 1 tablespoon dehydrated veggies (not ground)
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 1 teaspoon dried parsley
- 1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic
- 1/4 teaspoon mustard powder
- 3/8 cup (1/4 cup and 2 tablespoons) dried pinto beans
- 3/8 cup dried great northern beans
- 1/4 cup dried dark red kidney beans
- 1/4 cup dried lima beans
- 1/4 cup dried garbanzo beans
Directions for Assembling the Jars
- Line up each of the opened jars.
- Combine spices into a baggie, and place in jar. The "snack" baggies we used allowed us to stand it vertically in the center of the jar and hide it with the beans.
- Layer each type of beans over or around the bag in the order listed above.
- Tuck in the plastic bags, close each jar, and attach a tag with the directions that are provided in the recipe blog post.
He said
The ground dehydrated veggies take up some of the role of bouillon in this recipe by adding some good strong flavor. Unlike bouillon, however, it allows the recipient to choose the final saltiness.
Filling the beans around the snack bag was a painstaking process. I wanted beans on all sides of the bag so the bag couldn't be seen at the end, and this left little room inside the makeshift funnel. And that's without accounting for the final fold-over step that Debbie did for these jars.
She said
This bean soup was delicious and hearty. I really like the addition of the dehydrated veggies. We still have some of the veggies left, and it's fun to add them to various dishes. They are full of a lot of concentrated flavor, and they perk up well when rehydrated.
If you make this recipe, you could easily try replacing some of the beans with other varieties of beans. There are so many possibilities out there.
I heard of at least one guest who cooked this recipe in a slow cooker. It seems that just about anytime you cook beans, a slow cooker is a convenient method. You can toss in the beans and other ingredients, start the slow cooker, and let it cook unattended.
