Vegetable Beef Soup

Happy December!  I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and a fun time with family and friends.  We had a great time in Florida and fun times with family.  I'll recap that later on in the week.

Today I have a delicious soup recipe to share with you.  I've been craving comfort foods my whole pregnancy so vegetable soup was on my radar.  I looked for recipes on Pinterest and ultimately ended up making up my own.  I did a grocery pick up order with all of the ingredients.  My kids helped me make it.  We've been enjoying it all weekend.

Vegetable Soup Ingredients:

Montreal Steak Seasoning to taste
Salt & Pepper to taste
64oz V8
1/2 c Quaker quick barley
2 cloves chopped garlic
1/2 yellow onion diced
1/4 purple onion diced
1 c diced tomatoes
1/2 c frozen peas
1 carrot peeled and chopped
1 can corn
1 can beef broth
1 can green beans
1 can diced potatoes
1 can mixed veggies
1 15oz pkg Hormel Beef Roast Au Jus (use beef + au jus sauce)

Directions:
Diced up veggies, open and drain all cans and microwave the beef roast.  Let it cool, shred and remove any fat pieces. Add in shredded beef + au jus sauce to all the soup ingredients.  Season to taste.  Let cook for at least an hour and serve.  Reheats really well and tastes better the longer it cooks.  You can make this on the stove top or in a crock pot.

This recipes is wonderful because you really can add in ANY veggies that you like.  You can customize it to work for your family.  I used this as an opportunity to clean out my freezer.  I had a mix of random frozen veggies to finish off along with plenty of canned veggies.

Shred the beef:
Microwave it for 2-3 minutes.  Separate the meat out on a plate, let it cool and the shred it.  Remove any fat and throw that away.  This Hormel Beef Roast is SO GOOD!  It's about $5 and saves you SO MUCH time when making this soup.  It's tasty and adds so much flavor to the soup.

All the ingredients are added and now it's ready to cook.  You'll noticed all the fresh veggies softening and the barley puffing up as it cooks.

 After the soup cooks, things will soften and look more like this.

Moms, Aunts, Grandmas, Friends...
This is a really fun recipe to make with kids.  It's really fun to practice taking turns, being patient and adding in all the ingredients.  They loved alternating adding ingredients.  My kids are also more likely to try a new food or eat a food if they've helped prepare it.  They were SO PROUD of the soup.  They kept coming in to check on it, smell it and couldn't wait to try it.  Fletcher ate several bowls of it.  Olive enjoyed tasting it, but wasn't sure she loved it.

Hope your family loves this soup as much as we do!