Tag Archives: weight watchers soup

Beef and Barley Soup

14 Sep

This is a soup that I’ve only experienced from a can.  Nobody in my family ever made anything with “Barley” in it.  I wasn’t even sure what barley was until probably college… I knew it came in a can of vegetable beef soup, and that was about it.  But for some reason the other day I thought to myself… self… “i’m gonna make beef and barley soup, and I already know what i want in the broth!”  So, I set out throwing together ingredients, and I have to say I was pretty pleased with the results.  Best part? This all cooked in the crock pot while I was 2 hours away at a baseball game.  It’s about as low maintenance as you can get.  My husband doesn’t enjoy soup, so I often share what I make with my neighbors.  They gave it their official seal of approval, so here we go!

Ingredients

  • 1 lb of cubed stew meat (beef)
  • 1/2 of an onion, chopped finely
  • 2 carrots, chopped
  • 1 stalk of celery, chopped
  • 1 cup sliced (fresh or canned) mushrooms
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp pepper
  • 1 TBSP minced garlic
  • 40 oz of beef broth
  • 1 Tbsp Red Wine
  • 1 TBSP Worcestershire sauce
  • 3 Bay leaves
  • 1 can of condensed french onion soup (i used campbells)
  • 1/2 cup of uncooked pearl barley

Directions:

  1. The first thing I did was take the stew meat, which is already cubed into about 1 inch cubes, and i cut the pieces into 4’s.  I wanted this soup to have lots of pieces of easy to chew beef, vs having big hunks of beef like a stew.
  2. Once you’ve cut your beef, place it in the bottom of the crock pot, and throw everything else right in on top of it.
  3. Stir the mixture around a couple times and then cook the whole thing for 8-10 hours on low.
  4. Remove the bay leaves before serving.

Makes 9 (1 cup) servings= 185 Calories per serving

Appx 4 weight watchers points plus per serving

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Vegetable Beef Soup

18 Mar

Hi Friends!  Winter is winding down here in Kentucky, so I thought I would take this last cool week (i hope) to make a pot of Vegetable soup.  Now, Veggie soup is something I’ve made since, well, I don’t even remember when.  But, for whatever reason, I never thought to post it here.  Veggie soup is so versatile, which is one of the things I love about it.  For instance, nobody in my family ever made meatless vegetable soup, but I cooked it for 10 years during my vegetarian days.  My mom always included stew meat, and my granny always made it with ground beef.  Today, we’re going to go the ground beef route, but if you’re a vegetarian, you could easily just leave the beef out, so I’m going to mark this one “vegetarian friendly” over there on the categories column as well.

One of the characteristics I always found interesting in my granny’s soup, was her ability to get the ground beef to break up into a very fine texture.  I asked her how she did it like that, and she just said she didn’t really know.  So, after years of experimenting (including a couple of years where i literally poured a whole lb of ground beef into a blender) I finally got my own technique that works.  You’ll notice the “boil and stir” method in my directions below.  If you like big chunky ground beef, you can skip that and omit the broth altogether.  This is not my Granny’s recipe per-se, but it combines her beef technique with my mom’s addition of chopped cabbage, which is my favorite thing about her soup. So this is the best, of both.

Ingredients:

  • 1 lb lean ground beef
  • 1 can of beef broth
  • 2 cans of original “Veg-all”
  • 1 Large can of V8 juice (use the whole thing- 46 oz)
  • 1 can (15 oz) petite diced tomatoes
  • 2 cups of chopped raw cabbage
  • 1/2 tsp black pepper
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

Directions:

  1. In a saucepan, on the stovetop, combine 1 lb ground beef and 1 can broth.  Cook on medium, and stir the heck out of the beef until it all breaks up into a weird beefy sludge. (appetizing, i know…but this is how you get the really fine beef I talked about).  Continue cooking on stovetop, and stirring, until all the beef has browned.  Then drain the beef in a colander over the sink.  You don’t even need the broth. It’s strictly for beef-texture purposes.
  2. Now, combine all those other ingredients, including beef, into a crockpot or a large pan on the stove top.  If you’re using the crock pot, cook on low for 5-6 hours.  If you’re doing the stovetop, just simmer it for an hour or so until the cabbage is nice and done.

Makes 10 cups of soup

1 cup = 145 calories per serving

Approximately 3 weight watchers points plus 





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