Vegetable beef soup is simple and old-school but so delicious and soothing it’s worth a share. It’s also easy to adapt to a paleo-friendly recipe!
My grandmother put alphabet pasta in her vegetable beef soup. It’s funny to remember it now, because she was pretty by the book and didn’t really do cutesy things with the food that she cooked. Alphabet soup was about as cutesy as it got for her. It was just one of those fun little things that made her soup memorable for me (as if I needed anything to make her cooking more memorable for me)…that and the fact that she always served soup with buttered saltines, which I remember lining up around my soup bowl on the plate that was always, always placed under a soup bowl when you dined at her table.
I have been cooking for more than twenty years now (though admittedly a lot of those first few years consisted of Hamburger Helper and frozen chicken that I made homemade chicken tenders from, making my roommates think I was a homemaker supreme especially since I always bought the BEST honey mustard). Oddly enough, I have never made vegetable beef soup. When I realized this a few weeks ago, I thought it was so strange because my mom used to make it on a fairly regular basis (I recall it as something that we used to eat on Monday nights, for some reason, and always with either cornbread or strawberry/blueberry muffins) and my grandmother did too.
So…vegetable beef soup. It’s hardly worthy of a recipe because it is so very very simple. However, I know that a lot of people don’t quite have the confidence or instinct in the kitchen that I do and might appreciate a little help throwing something together. If soup seems daunting to you, know that that’s all this soup is: throwing some things together in a pot. It made enough soup for six servings, which meant that I didn’t have to think about lunch for a couple of days (always a good thing), and while a lot of people still associate ground beef with “bad for you”, this soup is pretty healthy. You can even make it paleo by omitting the corn (you can sub in green beans if you’d like)…a lot of paleo people eat white potatoes on occasion, but you can leave them out too if you want. Or…leave out the meat and use olive oil to make it vegan.
And I didn’t add alphabet pasta, but you totally can if you want. ?
Yield: 6 servings
To make this recipe paleo, use bacon fat, not canola oil, and omit the corn. Most people in the paleo community find it acceptable to eat white potatoes on occasion.
20 minPrep Time:
35 minCook Time:
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon bacon fat or canola oil
- 1 small onion, diced
- 4 ounces cremini mushrooms, wiped clean and sliced
- 1 pound ground beef
- 3-4 carrots, scrubbed clean and diced
- 2 medium potatoes, scrubbed clean and diced
- 14.5 ounce diced tomatoes
- 32-ounce carton low-sodium vegetable broth
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 cup fresh or frozen corn
- salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Heat the bacon fat or canola oil over medium heat in a 6-8 quart Dutch oven. Add the onion and cook until translucent. Add the mushrooms and cook until soft.
- Crumble the ground beef into the pan and brown thoroughly. Drain away any excess fat. Add the carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, vegetable broth, and bay leaf to the pot and bring to a boil (I cover the pot to make it boil faster.
- When the soup boils, reduce the heat to medium and simmer until the potatoes and carrots are tender, 15-20 minutes. Add the corn and cook for another minute or two.
- Remove the bay leaf and season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately.
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