Your Quick Guide to Hosting a Soup Swap or Soup Group This Season

updated Nov 7, 2019
We independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. All prices were accurate at the time of publishing.
Post Image
(Image credit: Jenny Chang-Rodriguez)

Mid-winter can be hard on the heart. It can be cold and dreary without lots of holiday get-togethers. The cure to beating those winter blues — or at least helping with them? A festive (and flavorful!) soup swap. Not only is it cozy winter hosting at its finest, but you and your guests also get plenty of soup to take home and keep you warm through the rest of the season.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of hosting or attending a soup swap, here is everything you need to know about this mid-winter celebration.

What Is a Soup Swap?

While cookbook clubs might be the hottest take on hosting friends for dinner, Soup Swaps — or Soup Groups — are the old-school food-and-friend gatherings that shouldn’t be skipped this winter.

The basic premise is that friends gather (each bringing several quarts of their favorite soup recipe), snacks are had, soups are sampled, and everyone goes home with several soups for stocking their fridge or freezer.

Owing its more recent popularity to the Soup Swap Community and author Knox Garner, soup swapping has been around as long as soup has. (After all, have you ever made soup without having tons of leftovers?)

Read more: What’s a Soup Swap? The Party Plan & Menu

(Image credit: Ghazalle Badiozamani)

Here’s How to Host a Soup Swap

Soup swaps can be as simple or as robust as you’d like: You can send out a formal invite or just invite friends over a text thread. But do ask your guests to bring soup in containers they don’t need to get back and that are ready for longer-term storage.

Ask each guest to bring a sampler container, so other friends can try soups before committing to take them home. Since everyone will have soups to sample and take home, you can also keep the food for hosting simple, like a veggie and cheese board.