CSA Beef Soup

This week in our CSA newsletter I read we would be receiving leeks, carrots, green or yellow beans, fennel, potatoes, tomatoes, etc. I wasn't sure what to do with the fennel, but fortunately our CSA newsletter suggested that fennel is sometimes used instead of celery in soups. Whoohoo! I finally had enough of the right CSA veggies to make a batch of soup. I just had to decide whether I wanted to make beef soup (with non-local, non-organic, grocery-store beef) or chicken soup (with Smart Chicken, which comes from the grocery store but isn't fed antibiotics). I really wanted to use as many of these veggies (and the zucchini hanging out in my fridge, and the corn I mentioned in this post) as possible. But I'm kind of a purist about my chicken soup - chicken, onions, carrots, celery, egg noodles. Maybe rice instead of the egg noodles if I'm feeling feisty. So I bought the beef. I also bought a few more local onions at the grocery store, to make sure I'd have enough. And I bought Dole celery from who-knows-where because I have a very difficult time finding celery locally, and, since I used all of my celery seed making pickles earlier this summer, I didn't have a very good substitute - and, in my humble opinion, it's not really stock without celery, even if our CSA farmer says fennel can be used as a substitute. (I had one bulb of fennel. I was planning to make an 8-quart pot full of soup. You do the math.)

Chopping carrots, celery, and onion are soothing, easy tasks I could practically do in my sleep. (Have you seen that commercial for some pre-chopped, pre-sauced frozen veggies that suggests that the last thing a person wants to do when he/she (really she) gets home from work is chop vegetables? It makes me laugh. I find chopping to be pretty therapeutic, but that's just me.)

When I got to the fennel, though, I was a little bit stuck. I found this website, which helped a little bit. Pictures would have been more helpful, but what can you do?

Next I had to figure out the leeks. I tried to make soup with leeks this spring, but had a "leek leak" on my way home from the Farmers' Market. So I've never had a leek in my kitchen before. I wasn't sure how much of the leek to use. All I knew was that leeks are very dirty inside and need to be washed very carefully. (I found the same was true with the fennel, by the way.) I googled "how to cook with leeks" and found this blog.
I rinsed them in the sink, then in a separate bowl of water.
This was the rinse water after I was done.
I sliced the leeks then separated the layers, soaking them in a third rinse (not pictured).
I'd use them again.

I used my Betty Crocker recipes for "beef and broth" and "vegetable beef soup." I don't know why I used the recipes - usually I just throw beef, spices, and vegetables into a pot. I considered soup recipes in two different books, but stuck with Betty Crocker. I tell ya, that lady doesn't get enough credit these days. While my other (fancy, gourmet) cookbooks told me to open a can of black-eyed peas, Ms. Crocker told me to cut corn off the cob and to shell the peas, noting parenthetically that I could use frozen vegetables if I needed to. I skipped the frozen peas because there were plenty of other vegetables in the soup, and I may have a hankering for peas in January.

I tripled the amount of liquid, doubled the seasonings, and kept the same amount of soup bones/beef called for in the broth recipe. I usually use more water than the recipe calls for, because I always intend to freeze soup when I make it (although the chicken soup has only made it to the freezer once) and I want to be sure I have enough broth. Also, I'm notoriously bad about measuring ingredients. I mentioned that in my very first post. I just chop what I have and throw it in the pot. Keep reading to see where that got me today . . .

For the stock I chopped:
a handful of baby carrots that I grabbed as "extras" from our CSA yesterday
four ribs of celery
a few small onions from the CSA (one to two ounces each)
one local onion from the grocery store (about six ounces)
fennel (fronds and bulb)
leeks
and dried rosemary from our CSA.
Early stock pot
After simmering for 3+ hours

The recipe also includes bay leaves, peppercorns, whole cloves, salt, parsley (I was going to use the carrot tops but they looked like they'd seen better days) and thyme, but I can't find my thyme . . .
I ended up with 20 cups of broth. (This is an 8.5 quart pot.) (I started with between 20 and 24 cups of water.)

For the soup I chopped:
two bags of carrots from our CSA (maybe 3/4 of a pound total?)
two bags of mixed green and yellow beans from the CSA

the rest of the fennel fronds and bulb from the CSA
the rest of the leeks from the CSA
one slicing tomato and four roma tomatoes from the CSA
three ears of corn (Okay I didn't chop this. I cut it off the cob) from a farmer who knows our CSA farmer
One local onion from the store.
The rest of the bag of celery from a monoculture Dole farm in Arizona.
I skipped the peas and potatoes that the recipe called for. I had potatoes but they don't freeze well and also this is what my pot looked like after I added the above ingredients:
and this when it started to simmer . . .
which is also why I didn't add the zucchini in my fridge.

(I added about 16 cups of vegetables to the broth. I'm not sure how they all fit in that pot. The recipe I was using called for 7.5 cups of vegetables, and since I was at least trying to double the recipe, I think I ended up with a good meat-veggie-broth ratio. I just need a bigger pot. I actually took about 4 cups of soup out of this pot and cooked it separately for a while, till it had cooked down a bit.)

We ate soup for dinner:
And I froze the leftovers:
and life was good!