Vegetable Beef Soup Fall Apart Beef

Vegetable Beef Soup

So many beef soups are watery and dull. Not this one!!! The thing that sets this beef soup recipe apart from the rest is the broth. It’s slightly thickened so it’s more like a thinnish gravy. It’s infused with herb flavour and also gets an extra depth of flavour from the secret ingredient: red wine. Or beer or stout. (They’re all good) It’s not about boozing up our soup! It’s about adding complexity and character to the soup broth flavour without simmering for hours up hours like we do with Beef Stew and Pot Roast. Without the wine, the broth still tastes very, very good. With the wine, it’s stellar! (And in care you’re concerned, the alcohol gets cooked out, just leaving behind flavour.) This Beef Soup is like beef stew in soup form – except faster to make!

What goes in Vegetable Beef Soup

Here’s what you need.

Stewing beef – anything economical, in small bite size pieces (remember, we’re making a soup here, not a stew) Red wine, stout or guinness – all of these work great here. Red wine gives it a classic beef stew flavour, Guinness or stout will give the soup a more intense, deep flavour like Irish Guinness Stew. I use wine most frequently because I always have some on hand, and because I prefer not to just use part of a can of beer that I wouldn’t choose to drink!

How to make Beef Soup

The key step here is to brown the beef well – aggressively is the term that I use. This adds a ton of flavour to the beef itself and the broth, from the brown bits on the bottom of the pot that dissolves into the broth. I like to sauté the mushrooms in butter and add them towards the end – but this is optional. Because golden brown buttery mushrooms vs mushrooms just simmered in the broth? There is no contest! (But really, it is optional 🙂 )

Fall-apart slow cooked beef!

I promised you fall-apart beef, and fall apart beef you shall get. And you will see just how tender the beef is in the recipe video below using the most ridiculous method – chopsticks of all things!! I know, I know, it’s soooo Asian. But right at that moment while I was filming, it was the first thought that came to me as the easiest way to show it on camera! 😂 I mean, how else can I pry a piece of beef apart using one hand??

What Beef Soup goes with

There’s a ton of veggies in this soup, and you could add even more into the soup. Green beans would be ideal, but they were extortionately overpriced on the day I shot this and I just couldn’t do it. So it’s an ideal meal-in-a bowl that doesn’t need anything more. But I’m pretty sure no one would say no to a side of quick Cheesy Garlic Bread!!! Or try one of these soup dunkers: