Hamburger Vegetable Soup

Hamburger Vegetable Soup

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There are a million and two different soup recipes out there, but sometimes it’s just fun to look at what you’ve got at home and try to make something work out for what you’re craving. Such was my recent go round with hamburger vegetable soup.

For some reason, hamburger vegetable soup (of all things) sounded really good after a couple days of having no appetite. I didn’t have a recipe—it’s not a soup I’ve ever consciously chosen to make—but it’s not too tricky to imagine what might be in it. I’ve eaten it plenty of times at various mom and pop cafes as a side to my sandwich.

So while this post does in fact end up giving you a “recipe”, it’s really just what happened when I was craving something, went to my fridge and pantry, pulled out what I thought might work, put them together in some kind of order that made sense, heated, tasted, added, tasted some more, scooped it into a bowl, and ate.

Which is absolutely what you can do too when you’re feeling like having soup. Don’t let the process of making soup be super complicated and stress you out. It’s like this…

Once you’ve determined what kind of ingredients you have to work with in your house, put the ingredients together in an order that makes sense.

When it comes to soup, if you’re using (raw) meat, it should be done (browned/cooked) as the first step. After that’s taken care of, often with onions, then add veggies. Things that take longer to cook should obviously be added first. Potatoes, carrots, celery should definitely end up in the pot before frozen peas or carrots.

Sometimes it helps to not think of it as a soup. Instead, think about it as a pot of water you’re cooking your supper veggies for. You already know it takes longer to boil potatoes for mashed taters than it does to heat up some frozen corn. Use that knowledge to know how to put your soup together.

If you’re using noodles, don’t add them too soon. Again, don’t think of this as soup, think of it as a pot of water working on your supper. If you put noodles into boiling water and let it boil for two hours, they will most likely turn to mush. Don’t let the “I’m making soup” throw you off. It’s a pot of “water” and you’ve got to get some ingredients ready for supper. How long does it take for them to be ready? That’s the same order in which they should go into the soup pot.

Add broth. Boil/simmer the ingredients together (adding whatever needs to be added at different appropriate intervals.)

Then taste what you’ve created and doctor it up! When you taste your creation, you might realize the perfect addition is more salt or some thyme, heavy cream, a sprinkle of sugar, a veggie you didn’t realize would work, more broth… soy sauce, a jar of stewed tomatoes, who knows!

Experimenting is part of the fun of cooking. The more you experiment, the better idea you will have of things that work together (as well as things that definitely don’t.)

Note: If you’re starting from absolute scratch with making your own broth, that makes the process/steps a little different. Check out how to make homemade chicken broth or make your own vegetable broth as a starter, and then add whatever you need, using the homemade broth as your base!

In any event, the bottom of this post is what I ultimately ended up with when I attempted a hamburger vegetable soup. You can follow the recipe if you’d like, or feel free to go completely rogue and off-script! The entire point of soup is that it works for YOU!

If you’d like a somewhat entertaining play-by-play of me trying to make decisions about what was going to be in this dang soup, head to my HAMBURGER VEGETABLE SOUP video.

Hamburger Vegetable Soup

An easy, use whatever you have type recipe that I ended up with after craving Hamburger Vegetable Soup one afternoon. NOTE: This is just what I used because it's what I had on hand. Feel free to change amounts or ingredients according to what works for you.

Ingredients

  • 1 lb ground beef
  • 1 large onion, diced
  • 2 ribs celery, chopped
  • 4 cloves garlic, diced
  • 3 carrots, peeled and chopped
  • 4 cups beef broth
  • 1 (28 oz.) can fire roasted diced tomatoes (not drained)
  • 8 oz noodles
  • 1 cup frozen peas
  • 1 cup corn
  • salt and pepper

Instructions

  1. In a large pot, brown the ground beef with the onion. Drain if necessary, add back to same large pot.

  2. Add garlic, celery, carrots, beef broth, salt, pepper, and diced tomatoes. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer for as long as you'd like. Mine sat at a very low simmer for a couple hours until we were just about ready to eat.

  3. About 15 minutes before serving, bring to a second boil. Add noodles, peas, and corn. Cook until noodles are done. Serve.

  4. NOTE: It may be necessary to add 1-2 more cups of broth. The way I made this, the noodles soaked up a lot of broth and it was a very "thick" soup, almost a hotdish (especially what was leftover). Adding more broth will thin it out if you desire a more brothy bowl!



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