Yum! I do love a hearty full-flavored appetite-filling bowl of beef and vegetable soup! This one is packed with nutrients and immunity fighting powers! I had written posts on the health benefits of chicken bone broth along with a great recipe for delicious chicken egg noodle soup using that chicken bone broth! Super immunity booster right when we need it the most… late Winter/early Spring! I also posted the health benefits of beef bone broth, specifically bone marrow broth. I use the Paleo diet as a very helpful base point for what I eat, but I don’t follow it strictly. It’s more realistic for me and my family to simply follow more along the lines of a wholesome, whole-food, all natural diet; food at its most natural state possible. Lots of healthy greens, vegetables, fruits, all just as they are, along with healthy nuts and healthy whole fats along with pasture-raised meats such as chickens and eggs, pork and beef and healthy fish! Animals being raised humanely and ethically! We always strive to eat fats, proteins and useful complex carbs while avoiding processed foods, unnecessary sugar and fructose corn syrup. No refined foods like white flour or industrial/processed corn and soy oils. It’s a lifestyle now, not a fad diet and by living this manner of eating, I’ve felt fantastic, the best I have perhaps all my life!! This is how I use Food As Medicine! Every Day!
I have learned over the years of educating myself on nutrition, that homemade bone broth is a staple not only of the Paleo diet but for many whole-food nutrient-dense diets as it has so many great health benefits and is full of the good fats that help our bodies thrive! We are keeping these immunity-dense foods on the table! All year round!
This Beef and Vegetable soup is made using the homemade bone marrow broth. It’s packed with so much natural goodness and most of all, filled with flavor!
To begin, we need good beef! I know I often show in my blogs how I can make stops at local farmers markets and/or nearby farms to pick up some great local farm fresh pasture raised grass fed meats. Sometimes though, I find them in the grocery! Which is also great! This means you can hopefully find them too without needing to go out of your way if there isn’t a local farmer nearby. Below is one of my favorite meats I find at my grocery. 100% Grass Fed and Grass Finished Beef.
Soooo about that Grass-Fed and Grass-Finished part… there are some great benefits of Grass-Fed Beef, and overall I feel it falls into the same rule of purchasing meat that was raised humanely having it be healthier for you as a person, physically and morally. Just as pasture-raised chickens are happier chickens, having the freedom to roam and thus are healthier by doing so, grass fed cows are also free to roam as they are pasture-raised. The label above states the cattle is free raised in open pastures. Otherwise the cattle could very well be cramped in a feedlot while being fed some grass in their diet. On the flip-side, some pasture-raised cattle could be fed grain, perhaps organic grain, if it doesn’t state they are 100% grass-fed or grass-fed and grass-finished. Below an infographic showing the health benefits found from grass fed beef. (found via pinterest).
The finished part is when the cows have matured and are weaned off their mother’s milk; Grass-finished means the cows continue in the pasture roaming and feeding on grass and plants. Grain-finished means after the cows have spent the majority of their lives in pastures eating grass, they then move into a feedlot where they begin to be fed grain. Grain fattens the cows up much faster.
Seems like an obvious choice to choose Grass-finished, however… there is the preference of pasture-raised grass-fed grain-finished approach, as it is claimed to allow the beef to have more flavor with more marbling in the meat. Below is from tonysmarket.com
This decision ultimately comes down to your preference in the flavor as well as the farming practices when the cattle is put on a grain-finish diet. I must say, using Strauss Brand Chiapetti’s Beef, I have never had a problem with the beef flavor! And I do admire their farming ethics! A few screenshots from their website:
Another farmer I found based in Ohio has been known to have his 100% grass-fed beef taste fantastic, using more of a holistic approach to their soil farming and grass maintenance. www.millergrassfed.com The quote below is from this article at ruhlman.com written in 2010! I remember reading this years ago when I first began on my quest to understand nutrition!
“I wanted to know how his steak was so different from every other grass-fed steak I’d eaten. While it’s infinitely nuanced, the basics are few.
“It starts in the ground,” he said. He covers his starting field and his finishing field with a mixture of micronutrients that include zinc, copper and boron. This results in protein rich grasses and nutrient-dense, nitrogen-rich clover.
The grass is precious to him.”
I love that quote! Below is a screenshot of their website, it’s inspiring to read about their farming practices! And they’re from Ohio! (As am I) With that brown Carhartt jacket on Aaron kind of looks like he could be related to my father. Be one of his brothers or related to my Pappa Booth!
Below is a photo of my Dad at home in Ohio, Dr. Joe Booth, taken a few years ago before he passed away. He looks good there. We had horses and goats (and ducks and swans and geese and peacocks and cats and dogs and raccoons and skunks and deer… and more… ALL as pets.)
We never had cattle though… until this random cow came wondering on our property. Mom took him in on our farmland and kept him for a while. Not sure what happened to him, perhaps the original owner was found? He ate our grass mostly from what I am told and I remember loved apples!
And where I live today in New York, these are our neighbors! Just half mile down the road, Kali makes me stop everyday to say “Hi Cows!”
So, back to this recipe! I am using Chiapetti’s grass-fed grass-finished beef; I begin by adding Pink Himalayan Salt and fresh ground pepper and then browning it on low-med heat all sides in a dutch oven pot. Don’t cook it thoroughly! Just want to brown to seal the flavor in! And I get weirded-out adding raw meat to vegetables to cook at the same time. I like to cook and brown the outsides first.
Before I brown the meat, I prefer to prepare the vegetables. I’m using similar vegetables from my Chicken Egg Noodle Soup recipe: Carrots, Celery, Red Onion, Sweet potatoes or real potatoes (if you prefer); you can read from that Chicken Soup post all about the immunity boosters from the vegetables added having lots of vitamins and minerals! And in this Beef and Vegetable recipe here, I’m adding fresh Green Beans and Kale (I put the kale in towards the end of cooking)! More Immunity Boosters! This along with the bone marrow broth, we’re really rocking the healthy immunity ingredients in this soup!
I like to saute the vegetables first in a separate skillet so they are nice and soft as I add them to the broth and the beef. This way I know they’ll be cooked nicely in the beef broth without the fear of overcooking my beef waiting for my vegetables to soften. Saute in a healthy true unrefined Coconut Oil or an Extra Virgin Olive Oil!
Once you brown the beef on all sides, add all the vegetables; they don’t have to be completely cooked but enough to get the party started, then add 2 bay leaves, about 1-2 tsp of dried thyme, tbsp or a few sprigs of fresh thyme, tbsp of parsley and about 2-3 quarts of bone broth, adding water or more broth depending on your preference, if you like the soup more watery or rather more flavorful with more healthy broth. I have to add water as sometimes I end up using all my broth that I have saved up, still the flavor is great! It will be more of a liquid soup and not thick as we’re not adding any “flour” such as almond flour etc. Keeping this simple! Let the broth simmer on medium with the vegetables and beef for 30 minutes to an hour. I like to let all the ingredients simmer together for a nice duration, allowing the beef to cook thoroughly but not becoming overcooked and chewy. Soft and flavorful! Before serving add some fresh Kale and allow kale to soften then serve it up!
Kali and Moana love it!
A great nourishing beef and vegetable soup to keep you staying healthy through the late winter and early spring months! A very Well-Fed meal for Your Whole Well-Being!
| Prep Time | 15 minutes |
| Cook Time | 1-2 hours |
| Servings |
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- 1-2 lbs Grass-Fed Beef Cubes
- 1 tbsp coconut oil or you can use extra virgin olive oil to saute vegetables
- 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (optional alternative to coconut oil)
- 1-2 cloves garlic cut or minced to saute vegetables in
- 3 stalks celery cut
- 3-4 sticks carrots cut
- 1/2-3/4 cup green beans cut
- 1/2 Red Onion cut and diced
- 1 Sweet Potato or regular potato cut and diced (optional)
- 2-3 leaves kale and/or spinach cut
- 1-2 tsp thyme
- 1 tbsp dried or fresh parsley
- 2 bay leaves
- 2-3 quarts homemade bone broth homemade or a great store bought beef bone broth
Ingredients
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- Cut and dice all vegetables and add to separate skillet with coconut oil (or olive oil) and garlic to begin to soften and saute over medium heat
- On plate, place beef and add sea salt and fresh ground pepper. You can cut beef cubes so they are nice bite-sized pieces.
- As vegetables are softening, in separate dutch oven pot, add a touch of olive oil over medium heat, then add beef and lower heat, allowing beef to brown on all sides but don't cook completely thoroughly.
- Once beef is browned, add in vegetables, parsley, thyme, bay leaves and bone broth. Allow all ingredients to simmer over medium heat with lid on pot for about an hour or so. Check meat to make sure it's not being over cooked but it should simmer and cook slowly so flavors blend well. You can then reduce heat to low so flavors simmer nicely.
- Before serving, add in kale and or spinach to soften for maybe 5 minutes and then serve. Enjoy!
Fantastic post! This and so many others. I see you’re putting in a lot of work in all your entries! Well-Done! ; )