Last week, I made my first good homemade soup in the company of my significant other, Josh.
Interestingly enough, unlike most of my other creations, it has come without any use of a recipe. Being a baker, I am notoriously addicted to clear and simple recipes to follow (embellishing here and there as I see fit). But it turned out that just combining the key elements (vegetables... beef... kind of a no-brainer) can turn out a fabulous concoction.
The soup above is made with four carrots, four russet potatoes, 1lb. of beef, a small bag of pearl barley, half a small freezer bag of green beans, half a small freezer bag of peas, a box of beef stock, two cups of water, salt, and Johnny's meat seasoning.
Everything was cut into small pieces and we cooked the beef through in a pan and seasoned it before putting it to boil with the potatoes. Once the potatoes were semi-soft, we added the rest of the vegetables, and adjusted the seasoning as necessary. I garnished it with shredded cheddar cheese.
Two problems we found were 1. the barley soaked up the remaining liquid, so we might want to use more broth and/or water next time to make it more soup-like and 2. we needed to reduce the other ingredients to make it soup and not stew.
Next time I want to add tomato paste to add some low-light flavor and give it another added veggie boost.
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