Look For These Mugs At The Thrift Store To Whip Up The Best Old-School Soups

Some of the best parts about soup season include the cozy vibes and heartwarming pots of broth-filled goodness. If you're looking to create the right ambiance to enjoy everything from comforting chicken noodle soup to creamy clam chowder, you might want to start at antique shops and thrift stores for the best dishware finds. Your goal? Look out for vintage soup recipe mugs, which feature a printed recipe right on the side. If you don't feel like looking for them in stores in person, you can also search for them online at ShopGoodwill.com and find them on Etsy and eBay. Prices can range from $8 to $14 a piece, although you might score a sweet deal on a set.

Now, the origin of these soup recipe mugs is a bit murky, but they were popular in the '70s and '80s, according to many posters on Reddit. Some users in the United Kingdom also said that they used to get these mugs from gas stations. "My dad used to collect the 'Green Shield stamps' that they gave out when he got petrol, and when you had enough stamps, you could trade them in for random things like these," one Reddit user wrote.

If you do locate some of these vintage soup vessels and are looking for a complete set, know that they come with different printed recipes on them. You can collect the mushroom, oxtail, tomato, and chicken soup versions, for instance, but there are plenty more out there, too. However, note that these mugs don't feature complete recipes, so you might have to improvise a bit. For example, the mushroom soup recipe mug lists all of the ingredients on the side — like mushrooms, flour, cream, broth, and half-and-half — but there are no instructions on how to make it.

You can either get creative with the given ingredients or look up a similar recipe online. Alternatively, you can simply make any of your favorite soup recipes, like roasted butternut squash soup or a simple, three-ingredient tomato soup, and enjoy them in any of these soup-themed vessels. Even if they don't exactly match the recipe on the bowl, you'll still have the perfect mug for serving whatever soup you're eating; and we promise, no one will care what's inside when the exterior looks so cute.