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Beef Veggie Soup

By Regina Souza

- 2 minutes read - 382 words

(as interpreted by Laura, and then halved)

Ingredients

  • 2.5 lb cubed stew meat or beef shank
  • ½ onion
  • 2 stalks/ribs celery (not 2 heads!)
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 8 carrots (peeled, 2 in food processor, others in large chunks) (for original double recipe, 10-15 carrots)
  • ½ butternut squash, peeled and cut in cubes (can also use 1 lb pre-cut)
  • 1 large or 2 small sweet potatoes (pale yellow), peeled and cut in cubes
  • 1 lb green beans, cut into halves or thirds and with ends removed

For the meat

  1. Food-process two of the carrots and all of the onion, the celery, and the garlic (“roughly even proportions of onion, carrots, and celery”)
  2. Spread these out on the bottom of the instant pot
  3. Pile the meat on top
  4. Add salt (1 Tb per 2 lbs meat)
  5. Cover with water + 1 inch
  6. Pressure cook for 35 minutes (Mama does 45 minutes for 5 lbs)
  7. At end of cooking time, let sit for 10 minutes, then vent

For the veggies

(Add salt as you go)

  1. To a pot of boiling water, add the cut carrots. Once it boils again, cook for 10 minutes.
  2. Add the sweet potatoes and butternut squash. Once it comes back to a boil, cook for 15 minutes.
  3. (Taste the water to see if it’s under- or over-salted). Add the green beans. Once the water boils, cook for 8-10 minutes.
  4. If you weren’t making this in the same pot with the meat, add the meat (or serve some from each pot, if the amount is too large to mix)

Notes October 16, ‘23: Mama definitely cuts the vegetables larger to save prep time, the sweet potatoes totally dissolved (that did make the broth a little thicker though, probably, so honestly that was fine). When adding water for the meat, next time I might just try making sure it’s all covered and then maybe adding a splash. I did accidentally only buy 1.7 lbs meat this time though, so that might have contributed. For future reference, it was Mama who explicitly suggested not browning the meat (to make the recipe more convenient) and despite browning seeming like a pretty universal step in similar recipes I looked at I honestly don’t feel like the taste or texture suffered at all from following her suggestion