Homemade Vegetable Beef Soup

This is some of the best homemade soup!  Our family has been making and eating homemade vegetable beef soup for as long as I can remember – at least 60 years.  First my Mom’s soup, then my wife’s and my mother-in law’s!  All great, but this recipe is the latest and greatest!  It IS from SCRATCH, but I managed to get the lady of the house to write it down while it was still in her mind.  This goes really well with cold, damp weather when you just want to stay indoors.

It starts with a chuck roast, about 2 lbs., which must be fully cooked first.  She said you could cook it in the oven or the crock-pot or anyway you choose to, but she cooked it in a crock-pot.

She seasoned it to taste with salt & pepper, added chopped or sliced onions and a container of Lipton Onion Soup Mix.  To that she added 3 cups of water and let it cook until tender in the crock-pot.  When done, she let it cool in the fridge for several days.  Eventually we ate a portion of it with a meal.  The rest went into the soup.  For the soup, she pulled the meat apart into small pieces, taking out the fat as she did.

Now to the making of the soup.  The remaining meat went into an 8 qt. Pot with the liquid from the crock-pot   If your pot is not at least 8 qts. then you might consider halving the recipe.

To the meat, add the following ingredients:

1. Large cans whole tomatoes (cut into small pieces & with the juice) diced tomatoes are not as good
2. Cups green frozen butter beans (some folks might call these lima, but these are “green” and small)
3. Bag of frozen mixed vegetables (I think “mixed” in this case, means peas and carrots, etc.)
4. Cups of frozen corn (off the cob, of course)

½    of a large fresh cabbage, cut into small pieces

1. Cup of frozen okra (cut into pieces)
2. Cup of carrots cut into small pieces
3. Cup of wheat spaghetti broken into small pieces
4. Tablespoons oregano
5. Tablespoon basil

?      Salt & pepper to taste

1. Qt. Tomato juice

4 or 5            beef bullion cubes dissolved or 3 cans of beef broth

Add water enough to make the soup as thick or thin as you wish.  Keep in mind that some of the water will boil away as it cooks.  If you don’t add enough water, it will take on the appearance of stew instead of soup.

Stir it occasionally with relatively high heat until the mixture boils.  Then turn down the heat to low and add:

1. Qt. of tomato juice

Cook for about 2 hours, stirring occasionally so that the soup does not burn on the bottom of the pot.  You might have to add water as it cooks to keep it from getting too thick.  Typically, I would say that the longer it cooks, the better it gets.

Just a note:  I usually add quite a bit of black pepper and some more salt, once it gets to my bowl.