Hearty Hamburger Soup

Just_Ducky!!'s Note:

Please bear with me as this is my first posting :-). Monday night is always soup night in our home and I'm often looking for recipes that are not too complicated AND my kids will eat. As usual no one recipe quite did what I wanted, so combining ideas from others I came up with this recipe and my kids loved it. Great comfort food for rainy days or cold prairie winters. I add extra ground cayenne to my bowl, for an extra kick and it's health properties. :D Serve with fresh, homemade bread or crusty buns. This recipe is very adaptable, as Chef Gusteau says... “anyone can cook !” =D. Please be creative to suit your own individual tastes as well as what you have on hand and feel free to share with me your changes.

• Total Time: 1 hrs 30 mins
• Prep Time: 30 mins
• Cook Time: 1 hrs

Ingredients:

Servings: 8

• 1 lb extra lean ground beef
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 medium onion, chopped small
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 -4 potatoes, diced (or 2 c. Frozen hash browns)
• 1 cup celery, chopped
• 3 -4 carrots, chopped
• 1/2 head cabbage, shredded
• 1 (10 ounce) can consomme
• 1 (28 ounce) can diced tomatoes (do not drain)
• 4 cups vegetable juice
• 2 cups water
• 1 (1 ounce) package onion soup mix
• 1/4 cup pearl barley
• 2 cups frozen vegetables (corn, peas, green beans, etc.)

Directions:

1. Brown ground beef, garlic & onion; drain off fat,
2. Add olive oil then vegetables. (add any preferred root vegetables here, parsnips, sweet potato, rutabaga).
3. Cook 5-10 minutes to soften vegetables.
4. Add can of consommé and de-glaze pan.
5. Add can of tomatoes, tomato juice, water, soup mix & barley. Season as desired. (I used sea salt, pepper, sprinkle of cayenne and about 4 tbs of spicy spaghetti seasoning, Worcestershire sauce would be nice too). (Add black or navy beans for extra protein & fibre).
6. Let simmer 45 minutes.
7. Add frozen veg and simmer additional 15 minutes.

Reviews

[under12parsecs]

Wonderful, flavorful, filling and easily adaptable to whatever you have on hand! I made as posted DH and I both loved it (which is hardly ever the case with soup as he prefers cream-based soups and I prefer broth-based). A definite keeper and I can't wait to experiment with different flavors and veggies.

[**Tinkerbell**]

I was looking for a soup recipe that would use the ground beef I already had thawed. There are a lot of choices posted here! :) But when I saw the intro to this recipe, and that it was your first recipe posted, I knew that was the one I wanted to try. Ducky, you didn't let me down! This is a fabulous recipe! My toddler ate it, my teen and I both had two helpings and DH will try it tomorrow for the first time, but we're confident that he's going to love it as much as we did. Although I really didn't change up the recipe, not having cabbage on hand didn't stop me from trying it because of your encouragement to be creative. I did have a half of a rutabaga to use up and used the hash brown option. I also added a can of black beans, some Worcestershire and homemade taco seasoning, which has cayenne and chili powder in it for spice. Thank you for posting this recipe, Just_Ducky!! I'm thrilled that I found it & will continue making it in the future! Made and enjoyed for TOTM's Soup-Fest 2011 tag game. :)