Vegetable Beef Soup Recipe
Published January 2, 2025. This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy.
This hearty vegetable beef soup recipe is loaded with fresh veggies and chunks of beef simmered to perfection in a well-seasoned herby broth. My family craves this soup several times a week. It’s so popular that I made it in big batches and froze it.
We are a soup family and make and eat it at least 2 times a week during the winter. You must try my Lentil Soup or Minestrone if you or your family are similar.
Vegetable Beef Soup
Vegetable beef soup is a simple, hearty meal of tender cooked vegetables with roasted-braised beef in a flavorful broth. It’s a soup that I make and eat almost all winter long. It’s a fantastic meal jam-packed with nutrients and just about anything I have left in the fridge and cabinets.
This is versatile and can be tailored to your liking with different vegetables, cuts of beef, and herbs. While this soup has no origin story, it can be traced back to early cuisine when people simmered meat, vegetables, and grains in liquid. Vegetable soup was first mentioned in print in the 5th-century Roman cookbook Apicius de re coquinaria.
Ingredients and Substitutions
- Beef – For this recipe, you can use previously cooked meat, like a New York strip roast, or a raw piece of meat like a chuck roast, top round, bottom round, flank steak, skirt steak, brisket, or ribeye.
- Onions – A yellow, white, red, or sweet onion will work. In addition, I also added some finely minced fresh garlic cloves.
- Vegetables – This is entirely subjective, but I used celery, carrots, parsnips, green beans, potatoes, corn, peas, and mushrooms. You could also add turnips, rutabaga, celeriac root, or beans. All vegetables but beets and bell peppers are good to use.
- Fat – I used unsalted butter for my beurre manie. I also use olive oil to sear the beef and mushrooms.
- Seasonings – Besides coarse salt and ground pepper, I finished the soup with Worcestershire and Tabasco sauce. Both of these are optional.
- Herbs – The vegetable beef soup is finished with fresh parsley, rosemary, and thyme. If you use dry herbs, use half the fresh ones I use in the recipe.
- Pasta – This is entirely optional, but I love pasta in my soup. In addition, I prefer to use smaller pasta like ditalini or acini di pepe.
- Flour – All-purpose or bread flour will work when making the thickening agent.
- Tomatoes – I used tomato paste and canned San Marzano tomatoes, which I crushed by hand. You can also use fresh or canned of any cut.
- Wine – This is optional, but dry red wine like Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Merlot, or Shiraz will work.
- Liquid – Beef stock is best, but brodo or just water will also work.
How to Make Vegetable Beef Soup
Cut the beef into bitesize pieces.
Add olive oil to a large rondeau or pot and heat over high heat.
Place in the beef, season with salt, and leave it untouched for 3 to 4 minutes. Then sauté it for 3 to 4 minutes or until well browned.
Set the beef to the side, add the onions to the pot, season with salt, and saute over medium heat for 5 minutes.
Turn the heat to low and cook for 10 minutes while occasionally stirring.
Stir in the garlic and cook it until fragrant.
Mix in the tomato paste and pince by cooking it for 3 to 4 minutes or until it becomes a rust-like color.
Deglaze with red wine and cook until it is almost completely absorbed into the paste and onions.
Pour in the stock, add the beef, bay leaf, salt, and pepper, and bring the mixture to a boil.
Cover it, turn the heat to medium, and cook for 60 to 75 minutes.
Make the beurre manie and prep the vegetables.
Once the beef is cooked, stir in the beurre manie until it thickens.
Add the carrots, celery, parsnips, potatoes, green beans, crushed tomatoes, and corn, and cook for 25 to 30 minutes over low to medium heat or until the veggies are cooked.
While cooking, boil the pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water. Strain under cold water, toss it with oil and keep it in a separate container until it’s ready to be used.
In a large frying pan over high heat, add in the oil, and once it begins to smoke lightly, add in the mushrooms, gently season with salt, and leave them untouched for 4 minutes.
Saute the mushrooms for an additional 3 to 4 minutes.
Add the mushrooms, peas, thyme, rosemary, parsley, salt, pepper, Worcestershire, and Tabasco sauce to the soup and combine.
Serve the soup in a bowl and add the desired amount of pre-cooked pasta.
Garnish with optional finely grated Parmigiano Reggiano and minced parsley.
Make-Ahead and Storage
Make-Ahead: If you keep the cooked pasta separate until it is ready to be served, you can make this soup up to two days before for freshness.
How to Store: This soup recipe will hold well in the refrigerator, covered up for up to 5 days. It will also freeze well covered for up to 3 months. Thaw it in the refrigerator for 1 day before reheating. It is best to store the soup separately from the cooked pasta.
How to Reheat: Add the desired amount of vegetable beef soup to a medium-sized sauce pot and heat over low heat until hot.
Chef Notes + Tips
- I used a 3-gallon pot to make this.
- You could also add drained canned kidney beans to this soup.
- Other ways to thicken the soup would be using a roux or a slurry.
- Feel free to swap the wine with a dark beer like Stout or Porter.
- If you do not drink alcohol, you can skip that ingredient and procedure.
- I treat this as a catch-all soup, so feel free to use any vegetables you have on hand, minus beets or bell peppers, which can alter the colors and make it bitter.
- Cooking the tomato paste deepens the umami flavor and adds a touch of acidity to the soup.
- Golden Yukon or red potatoes can also be used.
- The corn can be fresh, canned, or frozen.
- This recipe makes a lot, so I freeze most of it.
More Soup Recipes
Vegetable Beef Soup Recipe
Ingredients
- 6 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 ½ to 3 pounds of precooked or raw strip roast
- 2 peeled small-diced yellow onions
- 4 finely minced garlic cloves
- 3 tablespoons tomato paste
- 1 cup dry red wine, optional
- 16 cups beef stock
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 recipe for beurre manie
- 4 peeled and sliced carrots
- 4 sliced ribs of celery
- 3 small peeled and sliced parsnips, about ¾ cup
- 2 peeled large diced russet potatoes
- 2 cups corn kernels
- 28 ounce can San Marzano tomatoes, crushed by hand
- 8 ounces green beans, cut into 1” pieces
- 1 pound dry ditalini pasta
- 1 pint thinly sliced baby bella mushrooms
- 1 ½ cups green peas
- 1 ½ tablespoons finely minced fresh rosemary
- 1 ½ tablespoons finely minced fresh thyme
- 3 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
- Worcestershire and Tabasco sauce to taste
- coarse salt and freshly cracked pepper to taste
Instructions
- Next, in a large rondeau or pot add in 4 tablespoons of olive oil and heat over high heat until it begins to smoke lightly.
- Place the cut of beef, gently season with salt, and leave it untouched for 3 to 4 minutes. Then sauté it for 3 to 4 minutes or until well browned on all sides.
- Place the beef on a plate, and add the onions to the pot, gently season with salt, and saute over medium heat for 5 minutes or until lightly browned.
- Turn the heat down to low and cook for 10 minutes while occasionally stirring or until well browned and tender.
- Stir in the garlic and cook it until fragrant, which only takes 30 to 45 seconds.
- Mix in the tomato paste and pince by cooking it for 3 to 4 minutes or until it becomes rust-like in color.
- Deglaze with red wine and cook until it is almost completely absorbed into the paste and onions.
- Pour in the stock, add the beef, bay leaf, salt, and pepper, and bring the mixture to a boil. Cover it, turn the heat down to low to medium, and cook for 60 to 75 minutes or until the beef is extremely tender.
- In the meantime, make the beurre manie and prep the vegetables.
- Once the beef is cooked, stir in the beurre manie until it thickens. It should be like a thinner gravy. Not too thick, and not too thin, but just have enough viscosity to coat the back of a spoon or nappe.
- Add the carrots, celery, parsnips, potatoes, green beans, crushed tomatoes, and corn, and cook for 25 to 30 minutes over low to medium heat or just until the veggies are done cooking.
- While cooking, boil the pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water. Strain under cold water, toss it with oil and keep it in a separate container until it’s ready to be used.
- In a large frying pan over high heat, add in the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil and once it begins to smoke lightly, add in the mushrooms, gently season with salt, and leave them untouched for 4 minutes.
- Saute the mushrooms for an additional 3 to 4 minutes. Add the mushrooms, peas, thyme, rosemary, parsley, salt, pepper, Worcestershire, and Tabasco sauce to the soup and combine.
- Serve the soup in a bowl and add the desired amount of pre-cooked pasta. Garnish with optional finely grated Parmigiano Reggiano and minced parsley.
This looks so delicious. I’m at work and would love to have this for my Lunch today. I live in California but it is still cold here right now. Thanks Chef…Great recipe
My pleasure!
Sorry, I looked around your website and found the recipe for Burre Manie it sounds simple enough. Thank you.
I don’t see a recipe for making Beure Manie. The recipe sounds great and I will try it.