Beef Soup

Its been a while since I made a beef soup and only just realized that I didn’t have a recipe for one on the channel so I jumped at the opportunity to make this dish. This is the kind of dish that I would take my time to prepare, low and slow is the way to go but I was pretty hungry and I know a lot of people have busy schedules and wouldn’t have the luxury of waiting 3 hours for beef to cook until fork tender. So this particular recipe for beef soup uses a pressure cooker but it definitely doesn’t lack in flavor. I went through a few extra steps in the process to demonstrate how you can build flavors in layers.

A huge misconception when making these one-pot type recipes is that it you can throw all the ingredients into the pot and just wait for the magic to happen, this can’t be further from the truth. A lot of the chemistry in cooking happens when and how the ingredients interact with heat so for this beef soup, it’s important to get the steps right to achieve maximum flavor.

Beef Soup

Ingredients

• 1lb beef cut into bite sized chunks
• 2 large onions diced
• 6 cloves of garlic minced
• 2 celery stalks chopped
• 12 sprigs of thyme
• 2 cups of pumpkin cubed
• 8 pimentos chopped
• 4 tomatoes cubed
• 2 potatoes
• 2 carrots
• 1 scotch bonnet pepper
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 tbsp roucou
• 1 tbsp mustard powder
• 2 tsp clove powder
• salt & black pepper to taste
• 12 cups water
• oil

Method

1. Season beef with mustard powder, clove powder, salt and black pepper then set aside while you prep your veggies and aromatics
2. Add two tablespoons of oil to your pot/ pressure cooker then add the beef. Sauté the beef for approx 8 to 10 minutes, it will spring its’ own liquid.
3. Continue to cook the meat until the liquid/sauce starts to dry up and fry then remove from the pot.
4. Add two tablespoons of oil to the pot then add aromatics: Onion, pimento, garlic and celery then sauté for 2 minutes.
5. Add pumpkin, tomatoes, bayleaf, roucou and 8 sprigs of thyme (remove the leaves from the thyme from the stalks). Season with salt and black pepper then continue to sauté for five minutes.
6. Once the pumpkin starts to go tender, return the beef to the pot then add 6 cups of water. Cover and allow to cook in the pressure cooker for 40 minutes
7. After the pressure is released, uncover and use a spoon to mix and mash the pieces of pumpkin until smooth (optional)
8. Add 6 cups of water then add potatoes, carrots and scotch bonnet pepper
9. Cover the pot (but don’t seal it) and allow it to come to a boil and cook the potatoes and carrots until al-dente. The potatoes and carrots will continue to cook in the boil broth even though the heat is off.
10. Taste for salt and adjust accordingly.
11. Add remaining thyme
12. Serve hot & enjoy!

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