Hearty Vegetable Beef Soup (Pressure Cooker)

Another new year has begun. I hope everyone enjoyed their New Year celebrations and thank-you for all the well wishes for the new year. May 2009 bring you peace, joy, love and lots of yummy food!

Over the holiday season we did a fair amount of entertaining that resulted in a variety of left overs some that found their way into the soup pot. The weather has been quite cold with snow and blustery winds combined with being exhausted from the holiday season means the soup pot is working overtime. Soup is just so comforting! I especially appreciate that there is very little work to making soup as well.

Last Tuesday afternoon and evening we babysat oldest grandbaby while her parents went to a hockey game. At age two a favourite food is soup so I made a large pot of hearty vegetable beef soup. The basis for this soup is meaty soup bones. Soup bones are always very inexpensive even at the butcher shop where they cost about $1.50 each. These are nice meaty soup bones with enough meat on them for a larger pot of soup.

A common misconception is that making soup is a long, drawn out process when it isn't. Next to a stockpot the most often used kitchen appliance for making soup is a slow cooker. If you have been following this blog you will know that my slow cookers are the least used kitchen appliances I own. I prefer using a pressure cooker for making flavourful broth soups quickly.

Broth
2 meaty soup bones
2 ribs celery cut into chunks
2 carrots or 4 cocktail carrots
1 bay leaf
1 tsp Montreal Steak Seasoning
water to fill pressure cooker to ⅔ mark
Note: I would normally add a quartered, unpeeled onion except I was completely out of fresh cooking onions!

Vegetables
Note: I used home canned vegetables. To substitute store bought use 398 ml (15 oz) cans.
1 500 ml jar carrots
1 500 ml jar green beans
1 500 ml jar niblet corn
4 medium potatoes, cubed and cooked
2 green onions, thinly sliced
1 rib celery, sliced

Place the ingredients for the broth into the pressure cooker. Cover with water to the ⅔ line and no further. Place the lid on the pressure cooker. Bring to a boil on high. When the lid begins to vent (steam comes out) place the weight on the pressure valve. Let come to pressure then reduce heat and to keep a gentle rock. Let cook 20 to 30 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the pressure cooker depressurize before removing the weight. Total time for making the both and cooking the meat will be about 45 minutes.

Finished Soup Bones

While the pressure cooker is depressurizing steam the potato cubes. Steaming gives a firmer texture to the potatoes, preferable for soups. Cooking them separately will keep the broth at a lovely clarity. When the pressure cooker has depressurized, remove the weight and lid. Use a large slotted spoon to carefully remove the soup bones. The meat will very tender and easily fall off the bone. It may already have fallen from the bone. Cut the meat into bite sized pieces removing any gizzle and fat (arrow) as you cut. Set the meat aside. Use a slotted spoon to remove the vegetable chunks. The broth will be rich and flavourful yet clear. At this point the broth can be quick chilled and defatted (for canning) or used as is. There isn't a lot of fat on soup bones so it is fine to omit defatting.

Return the meat to the broth. Add the green onion and celery to the broth. Bring the soup to a low boil. Drain the vegetables reserving the liquid for later use. Pour into the soup. Add the potatoes. Cook about 5 minutes to heat throughly. Serve with homemade bread or crackers.

Hearty Vegetable Beef Soup

The total time to make this hearty vegetable beef soup including prep and cooking was just slight of one hour. The majority of that time was cook time with very little prep that freed up time for me to entertain oldest grandbaby while the soup was cooking. The yield was about 6 L of gorgeous vegetable beef soup, more than enough for dinner and lunch the following day. Notice the clarity of the broth despite the soup being chuck full of vegetables? Don't let the clarity fool you either because the broth itself was very rich and flavourful. This was a lovely and easy to make soup perfect for a cold, blustery day! Oldest grandbaby really enjoyed it and I enjoyed being able to spend time with her instead of in the kitchen, not that being in the kitchen is a bad thing just this time of year I'm tired. Ah well, winter vacation time will be here shortly giving me time to rejuvenate.

A New Look for 2009

I apologize for not keeping you updated on the new blog changes and thank-you for your patience. By now you have likely noticed all the tinkering I was doing yesterday. A couple of months ago I stumbled upon The Cutest Blog on the Block. I loved the scrolling design for the background so changed this blog to a pink and black polk-a-dot from them. In the meantime I set about making my own designs for all of my blogs. I just love PhotoShop®! The design for the cooking blog took a little longer and I'm will be doing a bit of tinkering yet.

The colour theme for this blog has been shades of pink from it's inception inspired by colour scheme of the kitchen in our old house. The pink has become a trademark so I wanted to keep the pink but tone it down a bit from the temporary pink and black. The wooden cafe building is a picture of an actual kitchen decoration from our old kitchen. It was one of the first images I learned to remove backgrounds on. I hope you like the new background and header. I had a lot of fun making both. There will still be a few changes coming over the next couple of days but they should be minor.

A Foodie Christmas

When our family gets together and that is quite often one thing is always guaranteed. There is an abundance of great food. Would you expect anything else from a foodie family? We had planned on stopping at a family Christmas Eve party then heading to the kids later in the evening but the weather quickly changed our plans so we were on the road in the early afternoon of the 24^th trying to stay ahead of the weather. We arrived safe and sound glad to be out of the snow.

All of our kids are very good cooks! One thing I enjoy about visiting any of our kids is they are a bit more daring when it comes to food. Sure they have the tried and true family favourites but they step away from simple home style cooking as well. Wednesday night we enjoyed a pasta with shrimp dish. Seafood is a family favourite and we do go through a lot of shrimp during the holidays so it was no surprise that the kids used shrimp as the main feature for a dish. Oldest grandbaby loves pasta! Christmas day the kids made homemade beef noodle soup. I showed them how to use the pressure cooker to cook the soup bones to make a rich stock. I will post more on that later as I made a vegetable beef soup using the same method when we got home. The kids found these wonderful spring rolls at a little shop in the GTA. If you buy them fresh they are 50¢ a piece but if you buy them frozen they are 20¢. I don't need to tell you which ones they bought. They served the spring rolls with plumb sauce for an easy appetizer. These fall under the category of "please bring me some home the next time you come down". They were very, very good and would make a nice appetizer to have on hand for entertaining. They also fall into the category of "I want to try making these from scratch" so I will be experimenting. The kids made easy panini for lunch. Now the beauty of these were unlike regular grilled cheese no butter or margarine was used at all. They were very good! I am now convinced I need to go shopping for a panini press.

Friday night the kids ordered pizza and wings. I cannot believe how much cheaper delivered pizza is where they live! Honestly a large pizza with 2 lb of wings where we are costs $37.49 delivered. That is one reason we make our own at home. They ordered 3 large pizzas, 2 lb wings and breadsticks for under $50 and it arrived in under a half hour! That's still expensive but it was more of a treat. Pictured is the buffalo chicken pizza. This was very nice. I seriously am going to be making this at home so watch for that recipe coming very soon.

Our toaster gave up the ghost a few months ago but I didn't replace it. We use the grill and indoor grill for toasting so a toaster wasn't a high priority. Parents to youngest grandbaby gifted us with a beautiful stainless steel Hamilton Beach® toaster with slots large enough to toast bagels and thicker slices of homemade breads. Parents to oldest grandbaby gifted us with a really nice French fry cutter. My husband is really into making homemade French fries at the moment so this is a much appreciated gift. One of my husband's clients gifted him with a lovely gift basket filled with items from Orange Crate Food Co. This is a Canadian company specializing in gourmet foods with no MSG or preservatives.

After all our adventures we arrived home Saturday night. Sunday we were both exhausted and sore because not being of sound mind we discovered the kid's Wii. Silly grandma and grandpa were quite entertaining! I heated up frozen hamburg soup served with stone ground wheat crackers for a quick and easy yet very filling dinner. I love having ready meals in the freezer!

Happy New Year 2009