DIY Del Ray: How to Host a Soup Exchange

What’s a soup exchange? It’s when several invitees make a different kind of soup each. At the event, everyone exchanges some of their soup with the others to take home. Simple as that.

Lori, the host of this year's soup exchange, did some online research and discovered that these events are quite popular. There’s even an annual soup swap day on Jan. 21. You can go about the exchange in many different ways. Here’s how we did it this time around:

Lori sent out an evite and got eight respondents, each of whom shared a soup recipe with her. A week before the exchange, she sent out these instructions:

1. Make soup, enough for at least 6 cups per person, including you. That’s 48 cups!

2. Pack in freezer bags, label and freeze. Freeze the bags facing down. Some use plastic storage, but bags use less room in our small-space homes.

3. Bring frozen soup to the party. One woman brought hers in a big cooler, which was handy for keeping the other bags as cold as possible during the party.

4. Warm and taste the different kinds. We had the following contributions at our soup exchange:

• Vegan coconut, pumpkin and black bean (with toasted pumpkin seeds)
• Taco soup with beef
• Mushroom barley
• Spicy garbanzo bean and turkey sausage
• Potato and ham

At the party, Lori heated up 3 cups of each type of soup so we could taste each one, one after the other. We snacked on bread and drank wine and chatted about this and that. It was an altogether lovely late afternoon get-together.

Then we swapped frozen bags and went home with an abundance of frozen soup, plus a nice collection of recipes and reheating tips.

For tips and lessons learned from this soup exchange, visit DIY Del Ray.