Beef and Vegetable Soup

During the wintertime, my mom would make this beef vegetable soup in the crock pot.  It's the perfect simple dinner for a weekend.  She'd prep the entire soup before we'd start cleaning on Saturday mornings or before going to church on Sunday.  By the time we got home, the smell would permeate the house.  And after cooking for hours, the beef would be tender and the potatoes and carrots would almost fall apart.

It's a tomato and beef broth base with just a few spices and stocked with different vegetables.  And the best part is how easy it is.  After cutting up the veggies, you dump all the ingredients into a crock pot and let it do the work for you.

What you put in this is completely up to you.  The recipe below is what I used for the picture above, but you can add any type of vegetable you'd like.  I've added 1 cup of fresh mushrooms, or 1 cup of zucchini medallions, or even 1 cup of cauliflour broken into small pieces.  All of them bring different flavors and I've yet to find a combination I don't like.

I'd recommend that you cook a batch of rolls just before you're ready to serve.  Not only will it go well with the soup, but you can use it to sop up any excess liquid when you're done.

Beef Vegetable Soup

Serves 6-8

2 pounds pounds stew meat
3 cups diced potatoes
2 cups of carrots, cut into mini-bite size pieces
3 stalks of celery, sliced into small half-moons
1 small onion, sliced into half-moons
48 oz stewed tomatoes
48 ounces low sodium beef broth (three cans)
2 teaspoons thyme
1/2 teaspoon sage
12 peppercorns
2 bay leaves

Add the meat and all of the vegetables into the crock pot.  You can brown the meat in a skillet over high heat if you want to get a crusty sear on the beef, but it's not mandatory. Next, add all of the vegetables. Pour the stewed tomatoes and beef broth over everything and stir.  Add the thyme, peppercorns and bay leaves and crank the crock pot up to low.  Cook for 6+ hours in the crock pot on high, so the smell resonates in the air.

Remove the bay leaves before eating and watch out for the peppercorns.  If you bite into them, they'll be really spicy.  Server hot and with some sort of bread or roll.

So make it easy on yourself and serve up a batch of this really great soup this weekend.