Homemade Vegetable Beef Soup

.

Dear Readers:

As promised in the blog Made From Scratch (almost) Cornbread, here at long last is The Editor's long awaited recipe to Homemade Vegetable Beef Soup. 

It's about time I'd say...

Ingredients:

2 lb. beef ribs or other semi-fatty cut... chuck or pot roast.

Chuck will do I guess, but it’s not as good and it can be tough even after pressure cooking. Also, ribs and pot roasts have more fat (ohhhhhh nooooooooooooo).

1 large onion

I like yellow or white in vegetable beef stew/soup

4 fresh carrots

I don't peel carrots. I do scrape them before rinsing well.

About all the vitamins in vegetables are in their skins so I don’t peel most of them (except taters... but I take those nasty old skins, add a little oil and salt then bake those bad boys up in the oven for a tasty snack.)

4 large sticks of celery

3 large or 4 medium potatoes

I DO peel potatoes for soup, but I don’t for french fries or home fries... more vitamins you know.

1/4 head each chopped purple and green cabbage

(use small cabbages)

seasoned salt

coarse ground black pepper

paprika
Mrs. Dash's

... all to taste. I start with 1 t of each but if you go over some on the seasonings it’s no big deal. There are lots of ingredients to soak it all up.

1 can beef broth

3 cups of water

2 or 3 beef bouillon cubes and/or beef bouillon paste

1 capful of red cooking wine (optional)

2 or 3 bay leaves

3 tablespoons of oil FOR STARTERS.
You have to use oil and fat if you want to be a really good cook. Both give great flavors to any food. Dieters and most people who are ultra health conscious will scoff at this as will all true vegetarians but believe me, it's the gospel truth.

All this hooey about making foods that taste just as good using only spices or dry roasting is just that... hooey.

Flour is another great ingredient.

WHY does everything that tastes great have to be fattening? I don’t know. I decided not to worry about it years ago.

CAVEAT: If you insist on ANY modifications to any of my recipes, don’t come crying to me when they don’t work. I wash my hands of it all anytime you dart off on a recipe tangent. What I am trying to say is:

LISTEN TO ME!!

I’VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR OVER 60 YEARS!!

And while I don’t know everything by any means, I still know how to handle myself in the kitchen (except for baking...I can’t bake worth a flip). See?? I’m honest to boot... at least when it comes to cooking.

Do not play poker or backgammon with me though. 

Cooking Directions:

Cut the beef into chunks.

If you're using ribs score deeply.

Regardless of the cut, DO NOT CUT THE BONES OUT. THEY ARE A HUGE SOURCE OF FLAVOR. 

Sprinkle the dry spices over the meat.

It is important to use a pressure cooker with this recipe.

I learned to pressure cook while I lived in Colorado. This lesson sunk in only after I tried to boil some potatoes and it took about 3 hours since at 6500 feet altitude water boils around 199 degrees.

Most people do not bother to learn the secrets of pressure cooking which is a huge mistake.

Furthermore most people who don't know about pressure cooking refuse to learn which is an even huger (huger??) more huge... whatever... mistake.

If you insist on cooking The Editor's Homemade Vegetable Beef Soup the old-fashioned way, see the comment above about ‘washing my hands of it all’ and forget about all the cooking times because it’s going to take a LOT longer.

Spray some PAM in the bottom of the pressure cooker.

Add the 3 T oil and get it hot – medium hot.

Brown the spiced beef chunks in the oil.

Microwave the 3 cups water and the bouillon cubes enough to dissolve then add to the pot.

Stir it all up and pressure cook on MEDIUM LOW heat UNTIL the pressure cap starts to rock. The pressure cooking process for phase 1 should take about 20 minutes.

Don’t overcook or all the water could vaporize inside the cooker, the beef will scorch and you will end up at Ruby Tuesday’s or, if times are tough Joe’s Beanery eating off of a plastic plate (I HATE plastic plates, glasses, spoons etc.)

Note: when beef scorches don’t bother trying to save it. There is nothing known to mankind that will get the scorched taste out of meat. Give it to the dog or toss it.

The same goes for foods that are freezer burned.

While the meat is pressure cooking, clean, scrape/wash/chop/cut and all that to the vegetables.

Do the onion last. Do you need a reason here??

Anyway to make it short and sweet, whatever you have to do, however you do it, prepare the vegetables for the pot.

Here is a secret about onions that I learned from Sue, my daughter. Use onions cold out of the refrigerator and you won’t hardly cry at all. I forget what all I had to do to pry this vital piece of information out of her but whatever it was, I finally did it.

When it worked, I cried anyway... but from happiness.

AND NOW THE KEY TO REALLY GREAT VEGETABLE BEEF SOUP.

Get out the large electric skillet.

WHAT?? You don’t have an electric skillet???

Stop what you are doing, go down to the Walmart Super-Store and buy one.

While you are there, get an electric knife if you don’t have one of those either. Do not EVER ask me to carve a turkey, ham or roast of beef without an electric knife because I will just laugh in your face.

I will carve up lamb with a regular knife but it's gonna be ugly. This is OK since I won’t be eating any lamb even if I don’t mess it up.

... more on lamb...

The Pilgrims set sail for the New World to escape religious persecution AND to escape the age-old British custom of consuming endless joints of leg of lamb while pretending to enjoy it. Ask anybody who says they like lamb why it has to be smothered with mint jelly before it’s fit for consumption.

I rest my case.

... but I digress from vegetable beef soup... onward...

STIR-FRY ALL OF THE VEGETABLES NOW.

DO YOU HEAR ME???

DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP OR THE RECIPE TURNS IN TO PLAIN, REGULAR, B-FLAT VEGETABLE BEEF SOUP!!

You will have to use even more oil when you stir fry. I did not say this before because I didn’t want to scare you away from the recipe.

Don’t worry about it, OK? You’ll live.

The vegetables and pressure cooking beef should be done about the same time. Instant cool the pressure cooker by running cold water over the top. This will condense the steam inside and pretty well stop the cooking.

Now add everything else together, pour enough water in to barely cover it all, and pressure cook the whole shebang for 20 minutes AFTER the pressure cap starts to rock.

MEDIUM HEAT!!

20 minutes in a pressure cooker is the same as 1 hour on the stovetop.

Pressure cooking seals flavors in and uses less water, time, and energy. Pressure cooking is a win/win situation. If you don’t have a pressure cooker, get one; and do me a favor when you take the thing out of the box.

READ THE DIRECTIONS BEFORE YOU USE IT!!

This is an art form that I am still trying to drum into my 24-year-old son Bill. I figure that if he learns to do this at an early age he will be way ahead of the game.

I was over 40 before I learned to faithfully read directions. As I recall, it finally sunk in halfway through a hot-wheels assembly during Bill’s 5th birthday party.

The Mick Lite (no it was Schaeffers because I was poor then) anyway, whatever I was drinking may have affected the way I didn’t assemble the hotwheels, but reading the directions first wouldn’t have hurt at all.

Whatever happened it was a lesson well learned because now I even read the directions on a can of chicken noodle soup.

Try reading the directions. It works!!

After 20 minutes in the pressure cooker, instant cool and serve while hot.

And let me know how it turns out. I am even open to an invitation(s). If I come over, I promise to stay out of YOUR kitchen (one of my cardinal rules) unless invited in.

To stretch the soup for a week or so, add xtras like tomatoes, corn, peas or green beans day-at-a-time but not the 1st day. 

If you add canned veggies, be sure to drain and rinse well first except for 'maters. They go into the pot juice and all.

Using this tip, (adding canned veggies piecemeal) you will have great soup that is a little different every day.

This is a very clever move since with a judicial application of just a little water to the area of the forehead you can claim to have slaved in the kitchen all afternoon when really you watched the game while enjoying a couple or 3 Mick Lites.

I repeat. Do NOT add any extra ingredients the 1st day; especially tomatoes.

Tomatoes alter the taste of the stew/soup dramatically.

This is OK the 4th day or so when the ‘sameness-of-it-all’ commences, good as it may be in its original form, just not the FIRST day.
. 
And that's the real deal Dear Readers; soup to nuts.

   

ENJOY!!