Vegetable Beef Soup w/pics

The hardest thing for me to do when making vegetable soup is deciding what to exclude. One of my strengths as a cook is making do and using what I have. One of my weaknesses is indecisiveness when the options are open.


The ingredients I thought I'd probably use (you can't see it, but there are two packages of soup meat, as well as the beef shank:




Oops, forgot the San Marzano tomatoes, the bay leaves and the Herbes de Provence:




Browning the beef in olive oil in two batches:




The second batch:




Good fond:




Instead of deglazing with a liquid, I add the chopped veg, and the moisture in the onions helps with the deglazing. And now I've added all the meat back:




The cabbage was added right after the beef stock, water, tomatoes*, bay leaves & Herbs de Provence. A little later, the kale & spinach were added. Carrots a little later. Frozen peas, last. *When I add the tomatoes I crush them in my hand as I put them in the pot (after thoroughly washing my hands, of course) :




Ladling up:




It's soup!



I didn't use the barley or the green beans. While I'd love to have potatoes or pasta or rice, I chose not to use them. My husband is okay with that.

One mistake. I had several containers of beef stock. Inadvertantly opened a container of chicken stock and didn't notice until mid-pour. Kept going.

In the pic of ingredients, I show beef base. Ended up also adding a little vegetable base, too.