welcome friends welcome back to the kitchen and stuff in our pantry the
pandemic Edition today we're gonna make a really simple soup using things that
are always in our pantry so it starts out with ground beef and I've got a chub
of medium ground beef here this is something that is usually in our freezer
and it's something to have on hand it it lasts a long time when frozen and then
you can just pull it out and use it whenever you need it
this is one of those times that we need it so into the pot and of course I'm
going to wash my hands although it'll be off-camera so you won't see it now this
is a heavy soup pot and just want to break up the ground beef and we want to
fry this out until it's browned now like I said everything else that's on this
counter is a staple that's either in our cupboard or our freezer or our
refrigerator it's mostly root vegetables so carrot onions carrots and onions keep
really well in your fridge we buy those in the fall and we're still eating them
now cabbage is the same thing so this cabbage carrots and onions would have
been picked six months ago and that's just what you use when you have limited
options they store really well and they're fairly nutritious reasonably
flavorful as well the only thing fresh is this celery and
you don't necessarily need the celery a great substitute would be celery root or
sell react again it's a root keeps really well in your fridge for a very
long time now if you're watching this in 2050 and you're wondering what's this
guy going on about this is March 30th 2020 and we're currently in the grips of
a global event that is causing a lot of people to panic a lot of grocery stores
have been fraught with panic buying and people are under lockdown orders either
they're completely quarantined or they're being asked to shelter in place
or they're being asked to social isolate or social distance themselves to
centrally stay in your house unless you absolutely have to go out now Julie and
I ran out of milk and eggs and a couple of other things that we absolutely had
to get so we went to the grocery store and the grocery store close to our house
was pretty well stocked again even though there had been panic buying and
you know two and a half weeks ago the shelves were empty they had been
restocked you know not fully restocked you maybe wouldn't find your preferred
brand of something so you know of the six kinds of peanut butter on the shelf
there might have only been one brand stocked
you just have to make do pretty much it don't panic
just carry on it's gonna be fine it really is going to be fine eventually
so once the beef was browned I threw in the carrot onion and celery and we're
just gonna let that fry off a little bit till the onion and celery has softened
next in is some tomato paste now we always have tomato paste in our cupboard
it is a very versatile thing it's used in a lot of dishes and as well as having
a couple cans in the pantry there's always usually two or three part
cans frozen in the freezer I forget that I've got them open use half the can
throw it in the freezer and then you know I open or another one because I
forget that I've got some open so that one came out of the freezer no clue how
long it had been in there still perfectly fine you want to put that in
and fry it off just a little bit tomato paste always benefits from some really
high heat before you add the rest of the ingredients
next danís is spicing so i've got two bay leaves
i'm gonna throw those in always have those on hand cloves i've got some
ground cloves i've got some thyme and some marjoram
and i'm gonna put in a little bit of salt at this point as well now the
spicing for this soup really is kind of a make do at this point i've put in
those our spices that I really like in this but you can play around with any of
the savoury herbs and prices to get to the point you like and
if you live in Canada to the United States you probably have a can of this
it might be a different brand this is club house poultry seasoning if you live
in the United States club house is sold as I think McCormick poultry seasoning
is a great mix for this soup so if you have this and you only pull it out at
Thanksgiving pull it out now and and cook with it because it's a it's a good
mix next in is some chopped cabbage and I use about a quarter to a third of a
head of cabbage and after that I'm putting in some uncooked rice now the
amount of rice that you put in can vary depending on how much filler you want in
your soup and if you don't want to use rice you could use pot barley or pearl
barley those would go really well again you just throw them in uncooked just
adjust the amount of liquid you put in so I put in two cups of water and next
I'm going to put in some chicken stock if you still have some of your homemade
stock use it if what you're doing is using stuff in a box because these are
desperate times go right ahead you could use chicken you could use beef
you could use a vegetable stock really you just want to bring some flavor to it
and if you want to just use water that's fine too or cut it down if you want to
save some of your stock for something else just use a little bit more water
there's a lot of flavor already going on in this soup and I don't think if you
used all water you would necessarily miss anything
the next thing I want to put in is my iron fish so this is just a piece of
iron that goes into the soup and over the course of boiling the soup it
releases small amounts of highly digestible iron it has worked for me
it's not going to work for everybody it is not the full solution for everybody
there are certain groups of people who will not benefit from this at all but it
has brought my iron levels up so I put it in and it just stays in the pot for
ten or fifteen minutes of boiling and then I pull it out last thing I'm gonna
put in is of course Marmite this brings just such an amazing flavor
out of everything else that's in this soup it makes the beef beefier certainly
does so generous a couple of tablespoons and you don't taste the actual Marmite
what it does is bring up the umami or makes the beef beefier makes the carrots
carry it to here makes everything better I think so definitely a plus and it also
extends the flavor of other things so you could use less meat if you didn't
want to use a full pound of ground beef and you wanted to put in more filler
this would bring out that beef flavor even with less meat so I'm gonna bring
this up to a boil turn it down to a simmer and let it simmer until the rice
is cooked through and at that point the soup is done soup is done so first
things first take out the bay leaves cuz nobody likes getting a bay leaf I always
win the bay leaf price under spoon and to get the fish oh yeah where is it it's
in there it's in there it's covered in vegetables it's hot so it's hot tell my
tongs might have been wise it's been in a pot of boiling soup okay there we go
now like I said earlier rice you don't want to put in rice you could put in
pasta potatoes barley yeah all kinds of other things
you might have to adjust the amount of liquid that you put in to account for
and so maybe it's soup and maybe it's due maybe it's due you know thicker thin
would you do you want and you know play with the root vegetables there's all
kinds of different things that you can do to play with this play with the
spicing change it up a little bit have it with a slice of our Nonis bread some
bread it smells great but it's hearty it's hearty and it's with stuff that
keeps in your fridge for a very long time so and most people who cook at home
have these are staples yeah I would I would think so
in the recipe you'll see that I put in a clove of garlic I didn't put any garlic
in here because well we've planted it we're now officially out because we
planted all of it we did not think far enough ahead to say oh you know what we
should save some to eat so we'll be waiting to the although the escape to
get started coming up so we can always start just snipping some of those off
because we've got a lot so this is this is a quick soup it doesn't need to be
cooked for very long and it keeps well itself so I mean this is a week worth of
lunches for us which isn't you know people do tire of eating the same thing
every day but I think we've reached a point where you know eating the same
thing every day is kind of the way you need to do what I need to do at this
point you could also keep it and put it between something else it'll keep for a
week or more freeze it freeze it put it in freezer containers freeze it and then
pull them out two weeks from now and you've made another soup a little bit so
thanks for stopping by stay well stay healthy stay safe see you again soon
you