I make "Gift in a Jar"s for people. This was, by far, one of the prettiest that I've ever made. Got raves from family, friends and coworkers on presentation. However, I always make recipes before I give them away. But this one I didn't. You see, I don't like soup at all. But I know a lot of people do, especially in the winter. I've never gotten a "bad" recipe from this website, so I figured "4 stars...GREAT!" Well, that must've been on presentation only, because numerous people have come up to me to tell me that the soup wasn't good and that the recipe wasn't correct. (I felt awful!) Apparently the liquid isn't adaquate at all. And when you do add enough liquid to make it "soupy" then it makes 2 VERY LARGE POTS of soup! Not bad if you are having company, but it should say that on the label. I won't make this recipe again.
There is this lady at the nursing home. She always talks about growing up at her ranch and such. I came home and found this recipe. I msde a jar for her and tied a bow around the top. She tried it and it brought a tear to her eye. She said how she couldnt beleive just how much it tasted like her mothers soup! Now i make it all the time! I love it!
The soup is very good and makes a great gift. For single persons or small eaters cut the recipe in half and put into a pint jar.
This soup looks very nice in the jar and I was skeptical as to how it would taste. It was really VERY good! The pasta was a little mushy though. I plan to make it for gifts this Christmas but I may leave out the pasta all together. It made 8 good-sized servings.
Great Gift Idea. Our family made these jars of soup for Christmas and I am still getting calls asking for the recipe. We changed the order of the ingredients to change the appearence and used Texas shaped pasta (we live in Texas) instead of alphabet shapes. We hot glued a dark green ribbon to the lid vacuum sealed the jars and they are just so beautiful people have them sitting around their homes as decorations. It tastes great too - kids & adults all loved it.
Something I really liked about this recipe as compared to the Friendship Soup recipe is that it doesn't require so much prep work that the maker is wondering they they making it from a jar in the first place. I think the essence of "in a jar" recipes is supposed to be homemade convenience foods, something that can be put together with little effort. I do think that size varies too much in the ingredients and would probably opt for some other pasta shapes that are more uniform to the overall appearance.
I made several batches of this soup mix this weekend. They turned out wonderfully. It is a very nice layered effect. Don't add tomatoes to the beans until they are tender. The acid in the tomatoes keeps the beans from getting any softer when they are added. I haven't made the soup yet but I will let you know how it turns out.
We're trying recipes out to give as gifts this year. Although the recipe tastes good this was not our favorite. I think the recipe called for too much rice and the size of the ingredients varied too much from tiny to large (the twist pasta). The Friendship soup in a jar is much more to our liking and is the one we're going with!
I bought a case of canning jars and put together 12 batches of this soup to send as Christmas gifts. Everyone loved it! My sister has even requested that I send some to her son at college because he loved the soup so much.
