Cheeseburger Soup

January is National Soup Month and man has it been cold enough for soup this year or what?!?!

Baby it’s cold outside!

Even the south has had to pull out their sweaters and heavy coats this year.  I love soups and could have a different one almost everyday of the week.  My family, on the other hand, prefers to limit the soup meals to about one…maybe two a week.

Last night we tried this one.  It was a cold, rainy Friday night and perfect for it.  Now this isn’t a “fix it and forget it” recipe but it does pull together quickly.  I had dinner done within an hour of starting it. A friend posted the link the recipe on facebook: http://therecipecritic.com/2012/12/cheeseburger-soup/  I’ve tried some other cheesburger soup recipes, but this one wins the taste race.

So enjoy this comfort food soup that my eleven year old said was like “dinner in a cup”

Brown in a soup pot (5 quart dutch oven or chili pot)

• 1 pound of ground beef

Drain the beef and set aside

In the same pot, add and then saute until tender: (you could chop up all of this the night before and have it waiting in the refrigerator for you when ready to make dinner after work which would speed the preparation)

• 1 T butter
• 3/4 cup chopped onion
• 3/4 cup shredded carrots
• 3/4 cup diced celery
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 1 teaspoon dried parsley flakes

Add to the pot and bring to a boil:

• 3 cups chicken broth
• 4 cups peeled and diced potatoes (dice them nice and small)

Once the soup is boiling, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 10-12 minutes or until potatoes are tender.

In a small skillet melt

• 3 T of butter

Add to the melted butter and cook and stir for 3-5 minutes or until it starts to get bubbly:

• 1/4 cup flour

Add the flour mixture to the soup and bring to a boil.

Cook and stir for 2 minutes and then reduce heat to low.

Stir into the soup:

• 2 cups (16 oz) of Velveeta, cubed…you can use 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese too
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper

Cook and stir until cheese melts.

Remove from heat and blend in:

• 1/4 cup of sour cream

Enjoy!

I enjoy my burgers with Worcestershire sauce on them, so I put a few dashes of Lea & Perrins in my soup and mixed it around.  I thought it was great.  Emily wondered about putting ketchup in it, but no one tried it.

Looking for some other soup recipes I’ve tried?  Click here

Tuscan Bean Soup- another easy one

The holidays have come and gone and if you hosted the big meal you are most likely tired of being in the kitchen.  This soup recipe is quick and easy.

Tuscan Bean Soup

In a 4-quart Dutch oven cook and stir over medium-high heat for about 3 minutes:

• 1 Tablespoon olive oil
• 1 cup baby carrots, coarsely chopped.  (I chopped mine with a Pampered Chef hand chopper that I’ve had for years.)
• 1 small onion chopped

Add:

• 2 cans of cannellini beans, rinsed and drained  (these are white kidney beans)
• 4 cups of chicken broth (or vegetable broth if you want to go vegetarian)
• 2 to 3 teaspoons dried Italian seasoning

Bring to boiling.

Slightly mash beans (I used a potato masher)

Reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 8 minutes, stirring occasionally.

On another burner, in a large skillet heat on medium-high

• 2 Tablespoons of olive oil

Add to the skillet and toss with tongs for 1 to 2 minutes until wilted

• 5 ounces of baby spinach

Remove spinach from the heat.

Ladle soup into bowls and top with spinach.  Sprinkle with some pepper and serve with some warm, crusty bread.

Slow Cooker- Chicken Enchilada Tacos

I’m always up for a “magic pot” recipe….you know what I mean, throw it all in, turn it on and come back later ready to eat.  This is one that I found on imom.com in a recipe file on their site.  It says that they are for tacos, which we did indeed eat them as with hard shells and also some flour tortillas.  I thought they were great on the tortillas, not so great in the hard shells.  BUT I think this is actually wonderful as a soup.  We crumbled up tortilla chips in it and really liked it that way.

So here is the recipe and then after that I will tell you how you could make your own tortilla strips if you don’t have any chips on hand.

Chicken Enchilada Tacos

Combine into the slow cooker:

• 1 lb diced or shredded cooked chicken (I had 4 cups frozen in the freezer and just defrosted that—made this recipe even easier!)
• 1 (15 oz) can crushed tomatoes
• 1 (15 oz) can fire-roasted diced tomatoes
• 1 (10 oz) can enchilada sauce (we used green sauce)
• 1 (4 oz) can chopped green chiles
• 1 (10 oz) package frozen Mexican corn blend (well, I couldn’t find this and wasn’t running to Trader Joes to get some so I used a can of corn that I drained of the juice)
• 1  medium onion
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp black pepper

Turn on low for 6 to 8 hours or high for 3 to 4.

Garnish with your favorite garnish: sour cream, Monterey jack cheese, cilantro, avocado, crisp lettuce…

You could also serve this over white rice.

—-

Make your own tortilla strips:

Cut tortillas into 1/2 inch wide strips.

Cut those then  in half crosswise.

Place on an ungreased baking sheet

Bake at 350 for 10-13 minutes or until crisp and slightly browned.

Soup #1 for our week- Santa Fe Chicken Soup

It has been C-O-L-D this weekend.  So what is better on a cold weekend than warm soup???!!!  I was actually out of Ro-Tel and we had to make a quick stop by the store on the way home from church for it (I had two recipes and each needed Ro-Tel…it really is staple in our cooking at the Smith house!).  Some of my friends in PA haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Ro-Tel….well let me introduce you:

Ro-Tel: A Smith Family Staple

You can find Ro-Tel at every grocery store now but the best prices are at Target and Wal-Mart.  I cringe to pay over $1 for it, but today I had to as the grocery store was a lot closer than Target/Wal-Mart.

Once I had my can of Ro-Tel, I was able to throw this soup together in no time.  I had the other ingredients on hand because I had planned to make this on Tuesday.  But I like to have a warm, family meal on Sunday and since we threw sandwiches together for lunch…I had to come up with something for dinner.

Enter Santa Fe Chicken Soup….

I shared this recipe about the same time last year!  It was in the crockpot and ready to go in no time thanks to some previously cooked, shredded and frozen chicken I had.

We served the soup with tortilla chips and Fritos along with apple slices of course (that is always my…I know if the girls don’t really eat enough soup they can fill up on Apple slices strategy)

So if you need something quick to throw together and ready to eat in about 3 or 4 hours….this is one for you.

Enjoy!

Chicken Corn Chowder

Looking for something quick to throw together and nice and warm to eat?  This recipe will do the trick!  This is a recipe that I got in a handout at the Moms4Moms group I attend at Faith Community Church in Brookhaven.  I made the soup earlier in the day and then pulled it off the stove to store in the refrigerator.  Later, Brad  warmed it up while I was at dance class with one of our daughters.  We served it with french bread, salad and tiny baked potatoes (to some in the local area these may seem like “regular” potatoes but to me they were  1/4 size of a regular potato).  I think the soup needed a bit more salt but I would wait to add that until you taste it all together…always easier to add salt than to take it away 🙂

Melt in Dutch oven over medium-high heat

• 1 Tablespoon butter

While butter is melting chop

• 6 green onions: Chop green onion tops; set aside
• Now to the white portion of the green onion, thinly slice that portion

Add to the melted butter and saute for 2 minutes:

• The thinly sliced white portions of the green onions

Add to the Dutch oven and cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly with a whisk:

• 2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour

Stir in:

• 2 cups chopped previously cooked chicken breasts (I pulled out some that I had frozen several weeks ago…made it so easy as I didn’t have to spend time cooking it)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 10 oz package of frozen corn kernels THAWED (I had to run my corn under water.  And the store was out of plain corn…go figure…not even in a big bag!  So I had 10 oz package of Niblets in a butter sauce)
• 14 oz of chicken broth (I made mine from 2 cubes of bouillon and 1 3/4 cup water)

Bring to a boil and reduce heat to simmer 5 minutes.

While the mixture simmers, combine to blend together:

• 10 oz of frozen corn kernels THAWED (I had about 12 oz in the freezer from a big bag we have been cooking through that I used)
• 2 cups milk

Blend the corn and milk until smooth (since my corn wasn’t quite thawed out it looked like some kind of yellow smoothie concoction!)

Add milk mixture to the pan and simmer until thoroughly heated.

To serve sprinkle with green onion tops you chopped early and shredded cheddar cheese.

We didn’t have any leftover, so if you are making this for more than 4…double it or serve “Texas-regular” sized potatoes 🙂

 

An Easy Soup- Tortellini Soup with Sausage and Vegetables

We tried a new recipe at our house tonight and it was a winner for everyone.  I joke that my girls won’t eat anything out of a bowl except cereal, but this is one soup they said they would gladly eat again.  I think that is because it was easy to pick out just what they wanted—the sausage and the tortellini!

I found the recipe on the blog “CheapGoodEats“.  I thought it would be fun to try out turnips on my family.  Well, it turned out that I never bought a turnip and I made the soup anyway with a few changes of my own.  So if you want the original recipe you will have to click on the CheapGoodEats link in the first sentence of this paragraph…if you want my copy, keep reading!

Tortellini Soup with Sausage and Vegetables

Brown on the stove top:

• 1 lb of bulk Italian sausage (all broken up into chunks)

While sausage is browning, chop:

• 1 onion
• 3 cloves garlic

In a large stockpot:

• Heat 1/4 cup olive oil

Add to the heated oil:

• the chopped onions and garlic

Saute until the onions are clear (about 10 minutes)

Add to the stockpot:

• 1 can of drained, cut green beans
• 1 can of fire roasted tomotoes that you have pureed making about 2 cups of tomato puree.  (I dumped the tomatoes in a large measuring cup and then used an immersion blender to puree.  Then I added a little water to bring my puree to the 2 cup mark)
• cooked (and drained) sausage
• 7 cups of beef broth (the original recipe says 6 to 8 cups…I make mine from bouillon cubes so I prepared it earlier while the sausage was browning)

Simmer for 20-30 minutes

Bring the soup to a bubble and stir in:

• 12 ounces of cheese tortellini

Cook for the time allotted on the package (mine was 11 minutes)

Stir in

• 1 teaspoon of dried thyme
• healthy dose of pepper

Allow the soup to simmer for 5 more minutes.

Serve hot.

It took me about 45 minutes to make this dish and it makes about 8 servings.

I would think if you wanted to do this dish in a vegetarian style you could use vegetable broth and some tofu meat crumbles (I don’t know much about them but a vegetarian friend of mine uses it to make the taco soup recipe I’ve posted)

Tortellini Soup: for 4 or for the masses!

This is a soup that we have made for years.  I’ve seen it in several cookbooks with tweaks on the ingredients here and there.  A few weeks ago I used this recipe as the vegetarian selection when I made dinner for the University of Pennsylvania orchestra.  The conductor, who also happens to be my handsome fella, wanted to provide dinner but didn’t want to just order pizza.  Somehow it went from me offering to bake dessert to me doing the entire meal….I’m not sure how that happened but it was a fun experience.  Since it was to be an unusually chilly day, it worked well to do soups, salad, bread and desserts for our menu.

So if you want to just feed a family of four you can make one recipe of this.  If you want to feed eight to ten, double the recipe.  If you need to feed more than that get some slow cookers and some helpers!

Tortellini Soup

In a stockpot heat over medium-high heat

• 2 teaspoons olive oil

Add to the pot and cook until tender:

• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 2 garlic cloves, pressed

Add to the pot and bring to a boil:

• 3 cans of broth–Vegetable if you are going vegetarian or Chicken if you aren’t.  (I actually made my broth from boiling water and dissolving bouillon cubes 2 cubes for every 1 3/4 cup of water which is one can)

Add to the pot:

• 1- 8oz package of dried, cheese filled tortellini

Cook the tortellini according to the package directions in the broth until tender.  Do NOT drain when tortellini are tender.

Add to the pot:

• 1- 14.5 oz diced tomatoes, undrained
• 2 teaspoons dried basil
• 1- 10oz package of frozen, chopped spinach that has been thawed and most of the water pressed out of the spinach

Reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes.

Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese if desired.

Now, here is how I tweaked it for the masses:
I was going to have to transport my dinner from our house to the University on a Sunday afternoon.  (Read here…Sunday mornings are busy days at our house as Brad and I both have roles to fill at our church he is there from 8 until 12 and I am there from 9 until 12:30ish)  So we had to get things done in advance.

Saturday we doubled the soup as written above EXCEPT I cooked the tortellini in boiling water for just half of the time directed on the package.  So the rest of the soup was put together, simmered, and then placed into containers in the refrigerator.  This made one larger crockpot of soup—I had two slow cookers of this soup and two others of Taco Soup.  On Sunday we transported the soup to UPenn and then I added the tortellini to the soup and placed the slow cookers on high.  In 2 1/2 hours the soups were ready to serve.  We served it with a green salad and bread along with brownies and gingerbread for dessert.

I was pleased with how the doubling and use of the slow cooker worked out for this recipe and plan to use it to invite people over for Sunday lunch sometime in the winter!

Broccoli Cheese Soup

Here is another soup to help celebrate the last few days of January “National Soup Month”.

My Grandmother used to make this soup and I have enjoyed it on many nights but it seems so very good on a cold, winter night like it was tonight!

Melt in stockpot:

• 1/4 stick of butter

Saute in butter:

• 1/2-1 cup of chopped onions

Add to the onions:

• 2 cans of chicken broth
• 16 oz chopped broccoli (can be fresh or frozen)
• 1 1/4 lb Velveeta
• 1 1/2 cup of milk

Heat on low until cheese is melted and soup is well mixed.

Stir often to prevent scorching

Prepare a cornstarch mixture to thicken the soup:  put the water in a bowl and then mix in the cornstarch and stir with fork until smooth.

• 3/4 cup tap water
• 1/2 cup cornstarch

Add cornstarch mixture to the soup and stir over medium heat until thickened.

Remove the soup from the heat and serve.

If the soup gets too thick you can add more milk to help thin it out.

Lentil Sausage Soup

My neighbor introduced me to this wonderful soup.  Her house smelled divine one day when I walked down to pick up my girls.  It is a Barefoot Contessa recipe.  It makes a ton and is a bit heavy on the preparation but it really is good.

In a large bowl:

• Cover 1 pound of green lentils with boiling water

Allow the lentils to sit for 15 minutes and then drain.

In a large stockpot over medium heat:

• heat 1/4 cup olive oil

Add to the heated oil and saute:

• 4 cups diced yellow onions
• 2-4 cups chopped leeks (white and light green parts only)
• 1 Tablespoon minced garlic
• 1/2 tablespoon kosher salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground black pepper
• 1 Tablespoon minced fresh thyme leaves
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin

Saute the above for about 20 minutes or until the vegetables are translucent and tender.

Add to the stockpot:

• 3 cups medium diced celery
• 3 cups chopped carrots

Saute for another 10 minutes.

Add to stockpot:

• 3 quarts of Chicken Broth
• 1/4 cup tomato paste
• drained lentils

Cover and Bring to a boil

Reduce the heat and simmer uncovered for 1 hour or until the lentils are cooked through and tender.

Check the seasonings and add more if needed.

Add to the stockpot:

• 1 lb kielbasa, cut in 1/2 lengthwise and sliced.  (bite sized)
• 2 Tablespoons dry red wine or red wine vinegar

Serve drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with grated Parmesan.

The chopping is what took so much time with this recipe but as I said, the end product is very much worth all the time.

Enjoy!

Soup for you!

I can’t think about soup without thinking of the Seinfeld episode where the soup nazi-guy says “No Soup for You!”.  Well, did you know that this is National Soup Month?  It really is so “Soup for you!”

Here is the soup we made tonight.  The girls were not huge fans but they each had several bites and then filled up on the bread and apple slices we also had.

Smoky Pea Soup

Combine these ingredients in a large, heavy stockpot:

• six or seven slices of 1/2 cooked bacon  (or 1 ham bone if you have it….we never do so we use bacon)
• 1 lb of green split peas
• 4 large carrots, chopped
• 4 large celery stalks, chopped
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 2 32-oz cans chicken broth  ( I had one box of broth and then used bouillon cubes to make the equivalent of the other)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves

Bring to a boil over high heat and let boil for about 5-10 minutes.

Reduce the heat to low; cover and cook, stirring occasionally, for 2 hours or until the vegetables are tender.

Taste to see if you need to add salt—add it 1/2 teaspoon at a time if needed.  We didn’t add any tonight as the bacon and broth seemed to take care of the saltiness.

We also remove the bacon and bay leaf before serving.

Tonight I started chopping at 3:30 and had it going right about 3:45.  Our soup was ready at 5:15.  So it takes a while to cook but the prep time is minimal and then you just walk away and let the wonderful aroma fill the house while you help kids with homework, read a book, or catch up on the news.  Then warm some bread and sit down for a nice, filling bowl of soup.

Enjoy!