Good Year Round Soup – Make Extra for Canning (includes vegetarian option)
This homemade vegetable beef soup recipe is good year round. Even if it’s in the thick of summer heat, if you’re a gardener, chances are you’ll be make soups even in summer.
Gardeners spend a lot of time throughout the summer cooking, canning and preserving their garden goodies to enjoy in winter. A fully stocked pantry in the fall is a most satisfying, gratifying and comforting feeling for gardeners, and each can opened is like opening a jar of nature’s nutrients packed with a dose of sunshine.
Not a Gardener?
If you’re not a gardener, you might consider at least growing tomatoes in containers on your patio or deck. But if you simply don’t have the time or interest in growing your own food, there are ways to can and prep if you want to. Many people will buy the freshest garden fresh produce from the farmers’ market, and will cook and can to preserve it.
Check Out a Nearby Cannery
We know a lady who spends a week canning and preserving foods she buys from the local fresh markets. She loads up her car and spends most of the week at the nearest public canning facility. You can check on canneries in your area here.
However and whenever you cook it, homemade vegetable beef soup is a nearly perfectly balanced meal of protein and nutrient rich veggies.
Homemade Vegetable Beef Soup Recipe
Ingredients
- to 1 1/2 lbs stew meat Could use leftover roast beef, too
- 1 medium to large onion peeled and chopped
- 2 cups beef broth or 1 can
- 3 cups water
- 1 cup carrots chopped
- 1 cup celery chopped
- 1 cup okra chopped
- 4 medium potatoes peeled and cut into chunks
- 2 cups whole kernel corn or 1 can
- 2 15 ounce cans petite diced tomatoes
- 1 cup peas canned or frozen
- 1 cup zuchini sliced
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
- 1 teaspoon worcestershire sauce
Instructions
- In a large pot on top of the stove, bring all ingredients to a boil.
- Decrease heat to simmer and let cook 1 1/2 hours until meat and potatoes are done.
- You don’t have to use the same vegetables we used in this recipe. Use whatever you have on hand and add the spices you like.
Makes ~3 quarts or 24 cups of soup for 12 2-cup servings.CROCKPOT OPTION:
- You could make this in the crockpot, too. Just cook 7 or 8 hours on low or 4 to 5 hours on high.
Notes
- Portobello mushrooms
- Baked tofu
- Beans
- Beyond Meat, meat balls or ground
- Additional Veggies
Nutrition
Leftovers Meat and Vegetable Soup
This could be called a Leftovers Soup or Refrigerator soup because it’s a great way to clear out refrigerator leftovers that need using.
There are as pretty much as many ways to make this as there are meats and vegetables. Here are a few alternate recipe ideas.
Meat Substitutes
- Chicken
- Meatballs
- Sausage
- Steak
- Turkey
Alternate Vegetables
- Baby Carrots – (chopped in half to 1/3)
- rainbow colors
- Bell peppers – all colors, if possible
- Beans –
- black eyed peas
- butter beans
- cannellini beans
- green beans – (chopped to bite size)
- Lentils or split peas
- lima beans
- Greens – (chopped small)
- chard
- collards
- kale
- Mushrooms – any kind, whole, quartered or sliced
- Squash –
- Yellow squash
- Winter Squash –
- butternut
- spaghetti
- Potatoes
- sweet potatoes – orange and/or purple
- colorful baby potatoes – (whole, halved or quartered to be bite size)
Grains
Pasta and rice, along with lentils, turn this homemade beef vegetable recipe into more of a minestrone soup.
- noodles – spiral, macaroni or penne work well
- quinoa (also, try this exceptional quinoa chili)
- rice –
- basmati
- black rice
- brown
- white
- wild (we order this 5 lb. bag of Minnesota wild rice so that we always have some on hand)
Alternate Seasonings – Your Choice of Ethnic Cuisine
Convert this into an ethnic soup of your choice by simply choosing different seasoning blends. For example if you feel like having Mexican soup, then substitute the seasonings in this recipe with a couple tablespoons of Mexican seasoning, and the same thing for whichever flavor you have a yen for.
- Cajun (especially good if you add sausage and okra, or blackened chicken, steak or fish)
- Curry Masala – (especially good if you add chickpeas)
- French – Herbs de Provence
- Italian
- Mexican
Relax, Have Fun and Experiment
The main point is to make use of what you have and to relax and enjoy experimenting. It’s hard to mess up a vegetable soup. The most that it might need is additional seasonings, in which case you can add salt and taste it first.
Often that’s all that’s needed to enhance the other flavors. But if it needs a little more, you can add more of each existing seasoning to taste, and or course adding a tablespoon of butter or olive oil always helps to add flavor.
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