Cold day = Soup day

Nov 7, 2011 by Ben

I play a stupid game each year.  The game goes like this.  How long can I wait until I have to turn the heat on.  We are lucky enough to live in Southern California where the weather is very temperate all year, but it does get chilly in the winter.  So each year I see how long I can wait to even light the pilot light on our furnace.  Sometimes I can go well into December.  We’ve had our first cold days this year, but I’m still holding out.  One thing that helps, is good warm soup.

So I ran across this file the other day that contains within it the recipes for all your favorite foods from restaurants and stores.  It has recipes for things like Outback Steakhouse Sydney’s Sinful Sundae (one of my favorites), and Red Lobsters’ cheesy biscuits (love those things).   Its a nice list of all those recipes in one place.  One that caught my eye was Olive Garden’s Pasta e Fagioli soup.  I always get that when we eat there.

And since its now officially cold outside (under 60 degrees people!!), I decided to make some nice warm soup.

This recipe has a lot of ingredients, but it couldn’t be easier to make.  You basically just throw them all in together.   Its very easy and very tasty.  Here’s how you do it

Ingredients:

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 small onion, diced (1 cup)
• 1 large carrot, julienned (1 cup)
• 3 stalks celery, chopped (1 cup)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 14.5-ounce cans diced tomatoes
• 1 15-ounce can red kidney beans (with liquid)
• 1 15-ounce can great northern beans (with liquid)
• 1 15-ounce can tomato sauce
• 1 12-ounce can V-8 juice
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 1 teaspoon basil
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon thyme
• 1/2 pound (1/2 pkg.) ditali pasta (or pasta of your choice)

 

brown the ground beef in a large pan

chop up your onions, carrots, celery etc

When the beef is brown, drain off some of the fat and throw in your vegetables.  Saute for 10 minutes.

Open up all of the cans.

and pour them all in.  See how easy this is?

Add in the rest of the ingredients and let simmer for an hour

at about 50 minutes in, get the pasta cooking.

when its just slightly under cooked, add it to the soup

stir it up, and your done.  Seriously, its just that easy.

And now you have this amazing, yummy, and warm soup for your cold days.

Store it in single serving containers for easy re-heating, or throw it in a zip lock bag and into the freezer for storing your extras.

Ben…

What is your favorite recipe for a cold day?