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Hamburger Soup Recipe |  |
Belly-Warming During Cold Weather. Weight Watchers Friendly. High Protein. Great for Meal Prep & Feeding a Crowd.
COMPLIMENTS!
- "... it was sooooo good!" ~ Dana
- "... this is very good and my kids also liked it." ~ Crystal
Ding-Ding, It's the Dinner Bell
The playground of my childhood was fifteen acres of woods and riverbank, rounded out with a treehouse, a cattle culvert and a cave; three gullies, boat docks and vegetable gardens; a makeshift baseball diamond, a chicken-coop-turned-clubhouse and a raspberry patch.
But we just called it "the neighborhood", home to six families in seven houses, three owned by brothers. The year I started kindergarten, my mom used to recount, 21 kids got on the schoolbus.
Within the neighborhood, we kids knew no boundaries. On the other side of the river was Ontario. Immigration? We'd swim over, boat over, skate over, depending on the season.
My mom was big on yard games: in summer, we played endless rounds of croquet in the front yard then switched to badminton matches in the back. One winter, the river froze rough so my dad flooded the front yard for an ice rink.
Come suppertime, we kids could be anywhere. To call us home for dinner, each family had a distinctive sound. The Andersons had the jingle of a bell, one of the Holte families the gong of a triangle. My dad pursed his lips around a conch shell horn, summoning my sister and me with a deep-bass bellow.
These days, my sister calls her boys to supper with the "tink" of a text message. It's modern, not quite so nostalgic, but it works.
And you, how are you calling your family to dinner these days?
Who Else L-O-V-E-S Soups With Noodles?!
We definitely love soups filled with plump noodles, such comfort food!
But the funny thing is, "less is more" when it comes to noodles in soup. It's all about balance.
I like to have noodles in every spoonful but don't want the noodles to dominate. Why? Because the vegetables taste so good! Because the meat is so hearty.
So whenever I make a soup with noodles, I use far fewer noodles than you'd think – and I've definitely learned to avoid the temptation to just toss in more-more-more. When I do? Big regret! The soup gets way off balance when there are too many noodles.
Here are some of my favorite soups with noodles, so good!
- My Chicken Noodle Soup, there's a special technique here to make the very most of just a few noodles, really saving carbs and calories but you'll never notice
- Plant Sale Soup
- Turkey Orzo Soup with Lemon & Spinach
HAMBURGER SOUP RECIPE
Time-to-table: 75 minutes
Makes 12 cups
- Splash of water
- 1 pound ground beef, turkey, elk or other meat
- 1 onion, chopped
- 1 red bell pepper, chopped
- 3 ribs celery, trimmed and chopped
- 15 ounces canned diced tomatoes
- 4 carrots, peeled and chopped
- 1 cup frozen corn (no need to thaw)
- 4 cups beef broth
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt (may need less or more depending on saltiness of the broth)
- Generous grind of black pepper
- 1/2 cup ketchup
- "Other" - see TIPS
-
ADD THIS LAST!
- 1 cup dried pasta
In a large pot or Dutch oven, cook the meat in the splash of water, breaking the meat up as it cooks, letting each piece get a little "burn" on it before turning over. Add the onion, pepper and celery as they're prepped and cook until the vegetables are beginning to soften. Add all the remaining ingredients except the pasta, cover and bring to a boil.
Turn the heat down to maintain a slow simmer and let cook until the vegetables are cooked. (If serving later, stop here, let cool, refrigerate. Return to a boil before proceeding.)
Add the pasta and cook for 10 - 15 minutes until the pasta is fully cooked. Serve and savor!
To reheat leftovers, you may need to add more liquid, that's because the pasta sucks up the broth.
It's easy to overdo the pasta, one cup doesn't look like a lot. But it really swells up so go easy unless you prefer a Hamburger-Pasta Soup. Substitute rice or a grain for the pasta too.
WEIGHT WATCHERS POINTS WW Old Points 2 & WW PointsPlus 3 & Smart Points 3 & Freestyle 1 (Freestyle assumes ground turkey) Weight Watchers, you have to love this hearty soup recipe. It just proves how a little meat can be so satisfying, especially when paired with the volume of healthful vegetables and just a touch of carbs. It's a great example of how eating well can leave us satisfied and healthy both. More Hamburger Recipes
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Shop Your Pantry First
(helping home cooks save money on groceries)~ beef or elk or turkey ~
~ bell peppers ~
~ tomatoes ~
~ carrots ~
~ corn ~
~ ketchup ~
~ All Recipes, By Ingredient ~
~ How to Save Money on Groceries ~
Kitchen Parade is written by second-generation food columnist Alanna Kellogg and features fresh, seasonal dishes for every-day healthful eating and occasional indulgences.
Quick Suppers are Kitchen Parade favorites and feature recipes easy on the budget, the clock, the waistline and the dishwasher. Do you have a favorite recipe that other Kitchen Parade readers might like? Just send me a quick e-mail via recipes@kitchen-parade.com. How to print a Kitchen Parade recipe. Never miss a recipe! If you like this recipe, sign up for a free e-mail subscription. If you like Kitchen Parade, you're sure to like my food blog about vegetable recipes, too, A Veggie Venture. If you make this recipe, I'd love to know your results! Just leave a comment below.
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I love soup and I love concept recipes.
ReplyDeleteLast week I made a very similar soup -- vegetable beef using leftover brisket instead of hamburger.
I recall a similar freedom to move about our neighborhood, including woods and streams, and playing games with large groups neighborhood kids. Do you think there are any places where kids enjoy that same sense of freedom, wonder and creative play today? I hope so.
ReplyDeleteI call my kids in to dinner with the same Olson family noise from my childhood-kind of a trill. And yes, even in the relatively urban setting of 12 miles away from the White House my kids manage to catch tadpoles, climb trees, get out in the woods/grassy areas each day.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the recipe-we'll try it this fall!
What a refreshing story! Thank you so much. This reminds me of my childhood--I lived on a ranch, so didn't have neighboring kids around but my siblings and I got good and dirty every day. I think my favorite memory is batting rocks out in the road in front of our house. We would also play baseball out there. My mom would just yell out the door for us to come in for dinner--hopefully we would be within range to hear it. The soup recipe would be a nice meal to come into after a hard day of playing outside!!!
ReplyDeleteI made this soup tonight and it was sooooo good! I added some red pepper flakes, garlic, and broccoli. I paired it with some ciabatta rolls and it was a hit! Thanks so much for the recipe!
ReplyDeleteI stumbled upon your site a couple weeks ago and have now made two recipes for your site. This Hamburger soup being one of them. I just wanted to let everyone know this is very good and my kids also liked it. A lot of times you will try a new recipe and it just not that good or worth making again. I am somewhat leary of trying new recipes.....but this I will definately make again. I followed your directions on making an oven roasted chicken with Kosher salt and it turned out amazing also. Thank you so much for sharing.....I will have to venture into more of your recipes :)
ReplyDeleteCrystal from Indiana 11/7/2011
Well hey Chrystal, thank YOU for taking the time to write these kind words. I'm glad both the Hamburger Soup and the Fast Roast Chicken were hits for you. They're favorites of mine, in fact, I roasted two chickens for a big impromptu dinner on Thursday night! And I hear you about trying new recipes, I think when you find a source of recipes that's a personal collection, mine say, that when your tastes are similar, you'll find lots of recipes that just work. It's one of the reasons why I love the recipes from food bloggers, because each blogger has a certain style that comes through. In magazines, big recipes sites, etc, it's harder to fish out the recipes that match your own style.
ReplyDeleteAnyway thanks again, come back often. Better yet, sign up for a free email subscription, then you'll see every new recipe plus reminders about older ones.
Going to use a tube of ground sausage I bought for a buck at the Dollar Tree to make this soup. Thanks, I had no idea what to do with it.
ReplyDeleteJust wondering if it might be a good idea to par cook the pasta, then add to soup.
ReplyDeleteYears ago I was making homemade chicken noodle soup and cooked the pasta right in wth the soup. Then I realized why there wasn't much broth. So I then started to cook the pasta in a separate pot.
Looking forward to making this. Thank you for sharing.
Annie ~ Great idea, the sausage! So glad to offer up a little inspiration!
ReplyDeleteSunny ~ You are so right that pasta “sucks up” the broth in soups. In fact, just looking at my picture, I can see that the pot came right of the stove! A day later, the broth would be all inside the pasta! Yours is a good solution, parcooking the pasta. Another one, the one that restaurants use, is to cook the pasta entirely separately then add just enough pasta to a bowl right before serving. Still another one is on the second day, just add more stock or even, depending on the soup, water, to re-hydrate the soup. I hope you love the soup, we do!