MONDAY RECIPE POST - GROUND BEEF VEGETABLE SOUP

I wanted to share another soup recipe.  I have a long list of them in our soup folder as we make them regularly during the colder weather especially, and I like to keep a record of them on my blog.  

We put this together on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2021.  It is a combination of two recipes, found when I was looking at All Recipes here and the other when visiting Carol's blog at Comfort Spring.  It had the addition of beef broth and cabbage,  and we enjoy adding cabbage to a lot of our meals.  I ended up adding, and substituting some ingredients for what I had available and the following is the recipe I followed.  The originals of both can be seen at the links provided.   Thank you to both sites that shared this soup, particularly a big thank you to Carol who really swayed my decision to making a delicious meal that we both felt was a ten out of ten.  Carol's soup is vegetarian though she gives options for adding chicken along with a couple of other ingredients at the end of her recipe.

Ground Beef Vegetable Soup – serves 6

1 pounds ground beef

4 to 6 carrots, sliced

4 celery ribs, chopped

1 large onion, chopped

A small green cabbage or half of a large one, roughly chopped

4 potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces

8 large-ish mushrooms, sliced

1 (15 ounce) can tomato sauce

1 (14.5 ounce) can whole tomatoes, crushed (I also added in a smaller can of diced tomatoes.  We always enjoy the extra tomatoes)

1 (15 ounce) can peas, undrained 

1 (15 ounce) can whole kernel corn, drained and rinsed, or 1 (15 ounce) can of cream-style, which is what I had in my pantry

1 (15 ounce) can green beans, drained and rinsed (we used unsalted)

2 large cartons (4 cups each) beef broth, or you can use vegetable broth

1 tablespoon brown sugar

Ground black pepper to taste

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

1 bay leaf, or more to taste

Put ground beef into a stockpot over medium-high heat, break up meat and cook until it is no longer pink.  This should take about 7 to 10 minutes. Drain and discard any excess grease.

Stir your vegetables into the ground beef.  Cook and stir  for about 5 minutes.

Stir mixture until evenly mixed. 

Add thyme and bay leaf to the pot.  Also add the tablespoon of brown sugar.  I was told once that it cuts down the acidity of the tomatoes.

Pour in the broth and stir again.

Bring the soup to a simmer, place a cover on the pot and cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are tender, about 1 hour.

We served ours with a few leaves of cilantro and sour cream on the top, with freshly ground black pepper.

I'm sure you have your own favorite soup recipe.  We were very happy with this one.  The broth alone was outstanding and got even better the day after, as often happens.

You can change these veggies around to suit your own taste. 

This would be easily made into a vegan-vegetarian recipe.

We ended up with a large pot of soup with lots of leftovers, some which we will freeze.

We didn't use any salt in the cooking process, so you might want to add your own to taste. 

Both of us gave this a 10 out of 10.