Vegetable Beef Soup

The final, delicious product!

If you read this blog regularly you may have noticed a common theme with me: I love soups! They are easy to make, potentially healthy, and something we can eat for several days. One of my favorite soups is homemade vegetable beef.

I’ve listed some vegetables here but you can use virtually any vegetable you like, or whatever is in season. A winter vegetable soup can be very different than a summer vegetable soup based on what is available where you live.

Just don’t use any vegetables that are especially sweet, like sweet potatoes. Guess how I know that?! One year I dumped a bunch of sweet potato chunks into my beautiful simmering cauldron of broth and found out that night at dinner that sweet potatoes are a bad choice because they turn to mush and they are naturally too sweet to be mixed into a soup. I love sweet potatoes but they are better used as a side dish.

Vegetable Beef Soup

• 2 tablespoons of olive oil

• 1 ½ pounds of stew beef

• 1 chopped onion

• 5 celery stalks, chopped

• 32 ounces of beef stock, homemade or purchased

• 2 beef bouillon cubes (I prefer Knorr)

• 28 ounce can of chopped tomatoes

• 28 ounce can of tomato puree

• 4-8 cups of water (see below)

• 4 sliced carrots

• 5 potatoes, peeled and diced

• 2 cups of chopped broccoli

• ½ head of sliced cabbage

• 1 can of green beans, drained, or about 2 cups of fresh green beans

• 1 can of corn, drained

• Other additions: fresh tomatoes, sliced squash, or sliced zucchini

1. Add the oil to a large dutch oven or gumbo pot. Heat on medium and cook the onions and celery. Add the beef and sear.

2. To the meat, add the beef stock and bouillon, and turn heat to simmer. Simmer with the lid on for about an hour.

3. After the hour of simmering, add the canned chopped tomatoes and the tomato puree. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to simmer. Simmer with the lid on for about an hour.

4. Add the harder vegetables (carrots, potatoes, broccoli) and cook about 15 minutes.

5. Add the other vegetables and if you need more water add it now. The vegetables should all be under the broth.

6. Cook until all the vegetables are tender.

This may seem like a lot of work but really it isn’t too bad and is well worth the effort.

My mom used to keep a pretty big plastic container in her freezer that she would dump leftover vegetables into, then she’d make soup with those vegetables when the container was full. That might sound yucky to some people but we loved it and it is economical and waste free!