Thursday, January 4, 2018

Vegetable Beef Soup from scratch in the Instant Pot

I can make 6+ quarts of stock in 90 minutes.   Is what sold me on the InstantPot.   I make alot of stock/broth here because I cook with it often.   I also don't have a particular recipe. It's roasted bones, veggies, herbs, water and go.

I've been checking out some instantpot cookbooks and find that many are just recreating stovetop or oven recipes.  Most rarely save much time and easily can ruin meat.   I'm on a FB group for newbie Instantpot owners and few can read directions and don't understand cooking meat.  

So do you need one?  If you don't have one don't go crazy trying to get one now.  Wait they will be cheap at yard sales or thrift shops soon.  I almost got one for $20 this fall.

I have one as I said for making stock/broth.  I also cook alot of large roasts  that need longer cooking times like chuck roasts, stew, pork shoulder and so on.   It's great for cooking dried beans and I've never been able to master that before .  Matt's happy because he loves chili with black beans.
it has a slow cooker feature which I have not used yet.   It has other features that I won't use like for yogurt since I have a yogurt maker or do it the old fashioned way in a thermos.   The rice feature I may use some time although we don't eat much rice here.  

I made vegetable beef soup today in under an hour which used to take all day to simmer away and here's the recipe.   I also include the super simple slow cooker and stove top way to do it.   Anyways I started soup at 11 and ate around noon.  Delicious.


Vegetable Beef Soup for the Instant Pot (or slow cooker or stove top).
I used 1 quart of beef stock as the base.  Make your own or purchase some.   Vegetable stock works great too.

1  package of 2 Meaty Soup Shanks.  OR used 1 pound of stew meat or a chuck roast cut into cubes.
1 quart of beef stock or vegetable stock.  Homemade or bought.
2 medium sized carrots, coarsely chopped
1 stalk of celery chopped
1/2 medium onion, coarsely chopped
1 clove garlic crushed and chopped
1 bay leaf

Optional 1/2 cup dry red wine
Use your instant pot instructions for sauteing.
I cut the meat off the soup shank into small pieces to speed up the cooking.  I then used the saute option and browned the meat and bones in a bit of butter and bacon fat.  I browned it all well, then used some water to deglaze the bottom of the pot and scrape up all the little bits.

 Add in 1 quart of stock, the optional wine if you want to & the carrots, onion, garlic, and bay leaf.  
Pressure cook for 20 minutes.   Do quick release.   Remove the meat and bones.  Remove an extra meat from the bones and and pull apart any larger pieces.  Spoon out the marrow from the bones and add to the pot.  Remove bay leaf.
Add in
1/2 cup frozen corn
1/3 cup frozen peas
1/2 cup frozen green beans- I cut them into smaller pieces easy to spoon up in soup.  
2 small russet potatoes, peeled and cut into small cubes-this is optional I just decided to add a little potato for more of a "stew" kind of dish.

Pressure cook again 5 minutes and let do a natural release.  

Season soup to taste.    You can thicken it also to make it more of a stew.

I used a meaty soup shank because I had a package that the seal had broken on plus I like the extra gelatin the marrow bones add.  My knees appreciate it!

SLOW COOKER.   The meat really needs to be browned first then add all the first batch of ingredients to the pot and slow cook 6 or so hours until meat is tender.  The last 1/2 hour or so add in the peas, corn and beans, potatoes.
STOVE TOP, again brown the meat, deglaze the pan, add in all first batch of ingredients and simmer all day.  Add the corn, peas and beans the last 1/2 hour.

FREEZE in 1 cup serving amounts for quick small meals.   Excellent to have on hand when illness hits.  
EAT WELL  BE WELL

OUR FARMSTORE IS OPEN SATURDAY AND SUNDAY  12-2pm.   All winter!  
The Cazenovia Market scheduled this week was cancelled if you hadn't heard.

DRIVE UP for PICKUP!!!     I know many of you cringe at getting out of your car to get meat, who wants to drag the kids out or risk tripping on a snow ball......    Pre-order and when you drive up I will bring it to your car.   Order online with our store and pay online  OR just drop me a message with your order.  I will bring your bag to your car and you can pay from your cozy car.    Where do you get that?  Only here!

ALL ORDERS OVER $20 GET A FREE PACKAGE OF SPARE RIBS!   So you can do some oven roasting of them.

We have a great package this month.
The Creekside Oink and Moo  $150  it's about 16- 17 pounds of meat and fills a plastic grocery bag.
Includes the following:
Beef Short Ribs, Beef Chuck Roast, Meaty Soup Shanks, Shaved Steak, Pork chops (4 chops), Bacon, sweet or hot italian sausage, smoked ham steak, country ribs and 4 pounds of ground beef.

There is a smaller one featuring all the pork cuts from the 5 days of Pastured Pork recipes last week.
$65  Pork Shoulder Roast, Chorizo,  Sweet or Hot Italian sausage, pork chops (4 chops in a pkg), ground beef, ground pork and spare ribs
We also have a larger Beef pack for $200 and a Pork only one for $200  both have about 20 pounds of meat each.   You can combine the 2 for the Hibernation pack for $375 and we'll see you in March!

There are some smaller packages plus a full selection of our retail cuts.  Yes we have beef bones for stock making and a small amount of chicken backs too.    Limited supply so get them and get cooking.
We have managed to lower our price on our ground beef, sweet and hot italian sausage, and a few other cuts.  
on farm purchases this month receive 8% discount at the farm.

https://squareup.com/store/creekside-meadows-farm/

or email is   thefarmer@creeksidemeadowsfarm.com

DELIVERIES NEXT WEEK

Tuesday  from the farm west Tully, Fabius, Otisco, Lafayette, Jamesville, onondaga, navarino, camillus, skaneateles, pompey and areas in between.   No delivery fees just a minimum order of $50 for areas west of I-81.  

Wednesday afternoon   Manlius, Fayetteville, Chittenango    2-4pm drop off.   Veterans can pickup at Clear Path.

Fridays-  Cazenovia area to Morrisville.  

***Some deliveries will be postponed if weather is bad.  Sorry I don't take the truck out in bad weather but I will know the day before if things need to rescheduled.


FARM HAPPENINGS
Yes it's cold out and about to get even colder.   Luckily we may not get the much bigger storm hitting the coast but then again we might if it shifts.
The animals are all in good shape. Eating well and with good shelter so feel confident all is well as it can be.

We've been hearing of farms with frozen livestock waterers and it makes me really glad we never invested in some types  that are causing problems.  You may recall back a few years ago the water line from the well at the house under the road to the barn kept freezing in the winter.   So that was dug up and replaced I think a year and a half ago.  That water line is now larger, plastic and buried about 6 feet under!  The frost free hydrants are 4 feet and 6 feet deep also.  We hope it's enough considering it's recommended to be 3 feet deep as enough.   So those "hydrants" are a steel pipe down in the ground with a lever kind of on off handle above ground.   This we hook a small length of garden hose to and fill a 300-400 gallon poly stock tank.  It has a floating electric heater in it to keep the water warm.  So far we've had no icing at all of the tank and the cows get lots of warm water.
What many farmers use are a self waterer where the cows bump something so water fills a bowl for drinking. Those often have a thermostat in them which always goes bad, some can't find replacements for and so on.  That thermostat runs a heating element to keep it all from freezing.  Well when that isn't working you get frozen water and it ALWAYS happens when it's this cold.  Not just the waterer freezes but it will go down deep underground freezing all the water lines.   It can be replaced if anyone can dig it up in this weather.  
We decided not to buy those types of waterers.   Sure when they work they are great.  But come on things ALWAYS break at the worst times.  We like to have back up plans in place and a 3rd back up too!  Those waterers are $500 on up each and well cough cough..... we aren't spending that soon.

We've been spending some time planning the maple syrup enterprise expansion for this year.  It will involve almost tripling the amount of tree taps we will have and going up the hillside where we've been culling bad trees so the good maples can get more sun.  We have  only 2 small 12 oz jugs of maple syrup left from 2017!  

We hope you enjoy this blog and the recipes.  Send me your recipes and I'll try to feature some of them as we go along.  

Stay warm.  Eat well and nourish your body to fight off those cruddy bugs out there.

TOMORROW

SHAVED STEAK Quesadillas.   yum.  





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