If you want to make your own instant soups you’ll need to assemble a lot of different dry ingredients. Some are easy like instant mashed potatoes. Others can be a little more complicated if you make your own bacon bits although you can buy them ready-made. This recipe uses instant mashed potatoes and bacon bits with dried chives. The bacon bits can be either real bacon or bacon flavored TVP. The TVP will give you a longer shelf-life.