Instant Potato, Chive and Bacon “Mugga Soup”

This Potato, Bacon and Chive Mugga Soup is the perfect lightweight, hot filler to take on a wintery hike. This hike almost didn’t happen, originally it was an overnight hike planned for the Mourne Mountains. But the weather forecast had other ideas. The overnight part was ditched about a week before as the long range forecasts told of wind and rain. The plan was to hike on Saturday, despite the yellow weather warning for wind.

When you’re outdoors with children, you have to do these sorts of dynamic risk assessments all the time to make sure you are managing risk and keeping everyone safe. We could have looked at the weather and cancelled today, instead we thought, “How can we make sure everyone stays safe?”.

Our goal today was navigation practice, to do that, we didn’t need to be up too high, near cliffs or summits. We were able to mitigate our risk, without impacting on the learning objective. So we picked an area of the Mournes with access away from trees and a landscape which was dramatic without being severe. We were parking at Meelmore Lodge and practising our skills around Trassey Track and Slieve Meelmore.

We also wanted to provide our Scouts with an opportunity to use our gas stoves.  We do most of our cooking on fire or with big two ring gas burners. They had packed lunches with them but we thought we could use the hiking stoves to make a hot drink or maybe a soup.

This is where the Potato, Chive and Bacon Mugga Soup comes in! We wanted to go with a Cuppa Soup style meal but I figured I could make a batch of instant potato soup with natural ingredients, less salt but also some big punchy flavours.

When buying potato flakes, as with most things, check the ingredients. We used Smash, the instant mashed potato flakes, which mostly contained potato. In other brands and types, there was all sorts or flavouring and preservatives – in one brand, the second listed ingredient was palm oil! A couple of slices of smoked streaky bacon, grilled until crispy and chopped up into little bits, is the perfect burst of flavour. It’s what makes this instant potato soup exactly what you need when you’re tucked behind a wall on a blustery day in the mountains.

Keep your Mugga Soup mix in a sealed tub and keep a small box separate with the bacon. This instant potato soup recipe should make enough for three mugs of soup or four small ones. I multiplied these portions to feed 18 of us.