The recipe I share this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon is all about the balance between effort and result. When you make real meals from scratch, the result can be phenomenal. But those meals usually take more effort than an off-the-shelf substitute.

I’ll always remember one of the comments I saw about my first recipe in the Flathead Beacon, 30-Minute Tomato Soup. Someone was appalled that it would take so long to make tomato soup when she could just pop open a can and heat it in the microwave. She completely missed the point of the recipe—and to this day is likely missing out on its rich flavor.

That reader will likely be just as snarky about this week’s recipe, even though its point is to achieve the equivalent of popping open a soup can by doing the bulk of the work ahead of time and keeping a hot and sour soup base in the freezer. But if you make that advanced effort, the result tastes amazing, even if all you do is heat up a couple of frozen cubes in a mug of stock.
Learn to make Hot and Sour Broth Base