Old-Fashioned Vegetable Beef Soup

Ingredients

Tick each one off as you go.

• 1 ½ lb (700 g) stewing beef (chuck), in 2 cm cubes
• 2 tbsp oil or beef dripping
• 2 onions, chopped
• 3 carrots and 3 sticks celery, sliced
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 tbsp tomato paste and 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 400 g tin chopped tomatoes
• 7 ½ cups (1800 ml) beef stock
• 2 large potatoes (about 400 g), diced
• 1 ¼ cups (150 g) green beans, cut into short lengths
• 1 ½ cups (200 g) sweetcorn (canned or frozen)
• 1 ⅛ cups (150 g) frozen peas
• 2 bay leaves and 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1 tsp sugar, if needed to balance the tomato
• Salt and black pepper, to taste

Method

1. Brown the beef. Pat the beef dry, season, and brown it hard in the hot oil in batches — never crowd the pot — until deeply colored all over. Lift each batch out as it's done.
2. Build the base. Soften the onion and celery in the same pot for 6–8 minutes, then stir in the garlic and tomato paste for a minute, scraping up the sticky brown bits from the bottom.
3. Simmer low. Return the beef with the tomatoes, Worcestershire, stock, bay and thyme. Bring to a gentle simmer, then partly cover and cook softly for about 1¼ hours, until the beef is nearly fork-tender.
4. Veg in stages. Add the carrot and potato for 15 minutes, then the green beans for another 8, and finally the sweetcorn and peas for the last 5 — so every vegetable keeps its shape.
5. Season & serve. Fish out the bay leaves, season well with salt and pepper, and add a teaspoon of sugar if the tomato tastes sharp. Serve brothy, with crusty bread and butter.