Winter brings one of three things to my mind when it comes to dinner: soup, beans, or beef stew. Give me a piping hot bowl of any of these and I am guaranteed to be a happy customer. Tonight it’s going to be beef and vegetable soup, so I thought I’d share the recipe here in case any one else is craving something warm to eat.

Be forewarned I use the word ‘recipe’ loosely. One of the best aspects of a soup like this is you can change the ingredients based upon what you have on hand, so it’s likely to never be the same twice. I’ve loosely based mine on the beef and vegetable soup recipe provided on the Better than Boullion jar. The nutritional analysis at the end of this post is from NutritionData.com and is for the ingredients as they’re listed: substitutions or additions will of course change things a bit. Also note that the serving size is huge, almost a pound of soup. All for under 400 tasty calories.

• 6 tbsp Better Than Boullion beef base
• 2 qts water
• 1 14oz can of diced tomatoes
• 1 16oz can of beans (pintos used here, though I also like garbanzo beans)
• 1.5 lbs beef pot roast, cooked and pulled into chunks
• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 2 medium stalks of celery, chopped
• 5 medium russet potatoes, chopped
• 10 oz mixed frozen vegetables (I just scoop out 3 cups from the bag)
• 1-2 bay leaves
• pepper and garlic to taste

Here comes the hard part: put everything together in a big pot. Simmer for an hour. Eat.

Here’s the nutritional analysis. Click for the full size image.

Tags: recipes

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 24th, 2009 at 9:08 pm and is filed under Personal Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.