Monday, January 21, 2008

It's a soup day!

Today I put together a vegetable beef soup. You might wonder at the wording of that, but there's a reason I expressed it that way. I can't say I made "Homemade Vegetable Soup" because all I did was open some cans and rip open a plastic bag or two. However, it was still very warm and appetizing, and hubby and I pretend that it was from scratch. Here's the recipe:

Vegetable Beef Soup
1 lb. of ground beef, browned drained and returned to the Dutch Oven
1 26 oz. can of diced tomatoes with liquid
1 26 oz. can diced potatoes, with liquid
3/4 package of frozen peas and carrots - just eyeball it
2 tablespoons dehydrated chopped onion
2 cans Campbell's beef gravy (10 oz. size)
1 can Campbell's beef consommé
Bring to a boil and reduce heat. Simmer covered for around 1 hour and serve with cornbread.
Makes about 4 quarts. If you don't want to eat leftovers for days, freeze the soup you don't eat.
Be sure that you label and date it. You don't want a mystery meal at some later date. I use a sharpie because it doesn't run or smear off.
Now for a small amount of cornbread. I halve my regular recipe with a few slight adjustments. We always have about half leftover if I don't cut the recipe.
I use Tenda Bake Cornmeal mix and the recipe on the back of the bag if I'm making the full size.
Tonight here's what I did.
1/2 cup whole milk
3 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 extra large egg (they were on sale)
1 cup of cornmeal mix
Preheat oven to 425°. Grease a 4" X 8" loaf pan very generously. Put first 3 ingredients in a medium mixing bowl and beat with a wire whip. (Recipes always warn you not to over mix, but when you just have your liquid ingredients, you can't damage the finished product. Still, you just want to get it fluffy.) Add the cornmeal mix and I still use the whip, but I just use it gently, like a spoon. This is where you can over mix. Stir slowly and gently till you don't have any large lumps. Small ones are OK. Turn into your greased pan and use a rubber spatula to scrape out all the goody. Put into the preheated oven and turn it down to 400° and set the timer for 20 minutes. If it has pulled away from the sides by then and it's nice and golden on top, remove it from the oven. Hubby likes a rather dark golden top, so I turn the broiler on high for 2 minutes. You can rub a piece of butter over the top if you want it to look especially pretty, but I don't bother to do that. I turn it out onto a wire cooling rack so that the bottom doesn't get soggy. This makes 3 to 4 pieces of cornbread to crumble up in you soup.
Hint: If you didn't grease you pan well enough and the cornbread wants to stick, wet a dish towel and fold it so that it is slightly larger than the pan. Set the pan on it for several minutes, and the cornbread will turn out without tearing up. This works for anything cooked in a metal pan.
That's all for tonight.
If you wondered why I preheated to 425° and reduced to 400°, it's because an oven can lose up to 100 degrees when the door is opened. I just get mine a little hotter than I need it, and then reduce to the setting recommended in the recipe.

1 comment:

Jennifer said...

Sounds good. Can't wait to hear what you are having tonight for dinner. I get a night off of kitchen duty tonight since we are having tacos to celebrate my neice's first birthday!

Love,
Your Daughter, The Diva