Sunday Soup

We love pot roast. My mom makes THE BEST pot roast on the planet, but I can manage a decent imitation when called upon. We eat it a lot, which does tend to create leftovers. I like pot roast leftovers almost as much as the first-run version, but I also really like homemade soup. Some of the pot roast gets stashed in the freezer, so that later on I can make yummy soup. Today was the day, yippee!

I started with one finely chopped onion and few ribs of celery, also chopped (I actually did this yesterday when I was prepping the stuff for the Valentine's day pork chops - just call me Miss efficiency [ha!]). Drop a stick of butter into a large soup/stock pot, start melting it, and then add the chopped onions and celery. Saute the onions and celery until they're just getting soft, and once that happens and all the butter is melted, pour a 1/4 cup white flour over the vegetables. Stir like crazy to get the flour incorporated into the butter, and keep stirring gently for another 5 minutes or so so that the "raw" taste gets cooked out of the flour.

Add beefy liquid - I used 64 ounces of Swanson's beef broth. You can use homemade stock, granulated beef bullion crystals, or whatever works for you. I might mention here that this is the last time I'm going to be using broth from the giant juice box-type packages, as these are not easily recyclable. There's finally a half-way decent recycling program in my fair community, so I'll be sure to only buys cans of broth henceforth (I do not make my own broth/stock from carcasses, as previously discussed in this blog).

Stir the onions/celery and broth together, then whisk for awhile to make sure you don't end up with flour lumps. At this point I added 1/4 cup red wine, which imparts a nice, deep note. You could use a few "glugs" Worcestershire sauce instead. For spices I used 1 tsp. oregano, 1 tsp. marjoram, and some fine-ground black pepper. Bay leaves are a great addition - mine seemed a little small and not very pungent, so I put in two (and added them to the grocery list). Let all this simmer for while.

While the pot simmers happily, peel and chop some carrots. Mine were small-to-medium and somewhat skinny, so I did 7. Add the carrots to the pot, along with your beef - I had gallon-size Ziploc about 3/4 full of left-over pot roast, which had been frozen and which I defrosted yesterday (see, planning ahead). Simmer some more.

Here's where the soup gets more creative. I really like barely, and had planned to mke this a beef-barley soup, but discovered I didn't have any. Next choice: potatoes. The potatoes will cook quickly and become mush, so don't peel and cut them to put in until and hour or so before eating time. I also added two cans of corn in the last hour. If you want, you could put in green beans or peas (I declined).

I let my soup simmer for a good 5 hours or so (corn and potatoes added in the last hour) while I sat on my butt and caught up on TiVo'd episodes of "Grey's Anatomy." I also ran the bread machine (a basic white French loaf, for the curious among you) so that we'll have fresh bread with our soup.

There are no photos of this fine repast, because I think my camera's in the car, and it's too cold/I'm too lazy to go outside and get it (of course, if the garage weren't such a disaster area, the car would be in there and the camera would be more readily accessible).

Soup on Sunday is a happy thing.