Kaylee's not-a-blog » Food » Meals » canned Beef Barley soup with instant rice

It's the peak of Summer, so I'm avoiding heat sources, which means...
van dash heating. :)

One of my regular "recipes", is just bunging both a can of soup and a (soda grade) bottle of water on the dash, then using the hot water either to dilute the soup (for "condensed" types), or to rehydrate "minute" rice or ramen.

Sadly, canned soup has become outrageously expensive, so I hadn't made any, until I noticed that Dollar General has some budget types of Campbell's soup, all for $1, or $0.80 when bought with their (regular) Saturday "$25 for $20" coupon.
The "beef barley" was intriguing, so I bought a can, and tested it with some new minute rice.

Steps:

• place soup can and water bottle on vehicle dash, in full sunlight, leave for 2 to 4 hours, until hot
• add some instant rice to a bowl, add hot water to bowl, let sit for about 10 minutes to rehydrate
• add soup
• stir & enjoy :)

Pictures:

The can of soup:

After transferring to a bowl (rice is barely visible at far right edge):

Review:

I had low expectations, in particular that the "beef" component would be barely noticeable.
It was much better than those expectations! :)

The beef chunks were tiny, however there were more than I expected, and the beef broth greatly enhanced the beef flavor.
There were far more vegetables than I expected, in particular carrots.

Bottom line:

This is trivially easy to make, with near zero cognitive load, and zero danger of damaging the food.
I plan to try some more of this budget soup line, and will definitely buy more of the beef barley.