Homemade Beef Vegetable Soup

One of the reasons that I don’t make a lot of complex recipes is because I feel like I never have the time to devote to them. During the week, I try to eat dinner with Danny (sometimes it is the only time that we have to catch up) and he rarely shuts down for the day until after 7pm. I get up early in the mornings to workout, so usually try to go to bed by 10pm (unless I am staying up late to watch basketball). Dinner during the week is usually heated up leftovers or something super simple like a sandwich (or a Costco taco kit if I am feeling fancy).

Basically, that is a long winded way of saying that I just don’t have the bandwith to devote a lot of time to cooking. Especially during the work week. And by the time Friday rolls around I want to switch my brain off.

So, the fact that I planned so far in advance to make this recipe was already a victory. I knew that we had nothing on the calendar for Sunday and I decided to commit to making this beef vegetable soup. From scratch. To be fair, this had to cook all day but 75% of it was hands off just letting things simmer.

There were a few mishaps with this one. When I first read over the recipe/bought ingredients I missed the part that said, “you should add a couple of large soup bones to this recipe, if you can get them.” This led to me googling “what is a soup bone and where do I buy one” which then led to a last second trip to the grocery store that morning.

I then realized that by cooking the soup bones in the 8 cups of water I was essentially making the beef broth/stock. Thus, I did not need the 6 servings of beef broth that I bought when originally making the grocery list for this one.

(This guy was very interested in what was happening in the kitchen once things started to smell like beef.)

Honestly, I really surprised myself with this one. I had pretty low expectations (especially after the dessert fail the week before) and this one exceeded all of them. It tasted almost exactly like I remember hers. Sitting down and eating this took me back to a time when the house that I grew up in actually felt like home and life was a lot easier.

As is the case with all of these recipes, this makes a ton. The note on it says that it makes 4 servings but I had *at least* 4 quarts leftover. I gave some to my dad and he called the next day asking if I had any more left, so, I guess he also liked it.  I now understand why my mom was constantly giving soup away to neighbors/ailing friends/family/etc.  

I am not 100% sure that this was my mom’s original beef vegetable soup recipe. She typically made a pot roast in the slow cooker and used the leftover meat from that in the soup. Also, she never used cabbage in her soup, so, I doubled the amount of frozen vegetables and left the cabbage out. I remembered her adding sugar to her version and that was not in this recipe, so, I added about 1 Tbsp sugar during the last step (adding the frozen vegetables).

The note on this says, “This recipe was my grandmother’s. It takes most of the day to cook! It gets better every time you reheat it. This recipe makes a very large pot of soup.” (This is an understatement – it makes enough to have leftovers for years).