When we were out at our desert house last week we were invited to some friends and I offered to bring soup (they did all the rest). I have a cookbook collection at our desert house, but they’re mostly my not-so-favorite ones. With hundreds of cookbooks in my collection I surely should stock the other house with a bit more variety. But anyway, I have a couple of soup books there, and I turned to Lee Bailey’s Soup Meals. Sure enough, found a recipe that would work – fairly low carb and healthy to boot.
Here's the escarole, barely cooked at this point
This soup is a beef brothy kind of one – redolent with oodles of onions (too many, actually, so I’ve altered the recipe), mushrooms, escarole, and boosted with beef concentrate. We liked the soup. Very flavorful. We bought a pack of New York steaks at Costco – for that’s the only way I’d consider using such beauties in a SOUP, for goodness’ sake! I doubled the recipe and used three. You could easily use stew beef in this (and cook it much longer, of course), but don’t add the escarole until the last couple of minutes. If you did use a tougher cut of meat, I’d also add some more carrots, celery and onions in the last 10 minutes so you’d have some veggies that are still toothsome.
The first night we ate this we just sprinkled the top with grated Parmesan (not in the recipe). The soup was good, but not sensational. Our friends served some fresh bread right out of the bread machine. I had divided the soup in half, so with the leftovers I broiled some Parmesan on baguette slices and floated them on top of the soup. Also added some more Penzey’s beef soup base. What a difference! The Parmesan is absolutely that umami taste – it made this soup really, really good. If you don’t remember about umami, click HERE for my post about it. The toasts also gave the soup added texture.
The steaks, cut into cubes, are just browned in a separate pan and only added to the soup during the last 2-3 minutes. Having learned with the first serving of it, the second time around I cut up the browned (only) steak cubes even smaller (each 1-inch cube in about 4 pieces) and dropped them into the soup a mere minute or two before serving. If you add it earlier the steak definitely goes from tender to tough. And you certainly don’t want to do that with New York steak! Don’t be put off by the number of ingredients – it really comes together fairly easily. The most tedious part was slicing and chopping the mushrooms and onions.
printer-friendly PDF
Steak & Mushroom Soup with Parmesan Toasts
Recipe: Based on a recipe in Lee Bailey’s Soup Meals
Servings: 8
1 1/2 pounds steaks — New York strip, cut in 1-inch cubes
MARINADE:
2/3 cup canola oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons soy sauce — dark, if available
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 large clove garlic — minced
SOUP:
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium onion — coarsely chopped
1 medium onion — quartered, thinly sliced
2 small carrots — diced
2 stalks celery — diced
1 pound button mushrooms — thickly sliced
1/4 cup flour — for dredging meat (may need more)
1 large bay leaf
6 cups beef stock (or beef concentrate and water)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 1/2 pounds escarole — washed, torn into pieces, stems broken
2 cups water — if needed
PARMESAN TOASTS:
1/2 medium baguette — sliced (about 16 slices)
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1. Whisk marinade ingredients together in a bowl (or combine in a plastic zip-seal bag) and add cubed steak pieces, being sure all are submerged. Set aside for at least an hour, turning once or twice during that time. If doing this a few hours ahead, refrigerate the meat.
2. Meanwhile, heat half the oil and butter in a large stockpot. Add the chopped onion (reserve the sliced onions for later), carrots and celery. Cook over medium to high heat until nicely golden, but not burned, about 5 minutes. Add mushrooms and continue cooking until they are just wilted, just a few more minutes. Add the beef stock and bring to a simmer.
3. Heat a large skillet and add the remaining oil and butter, Toss steak cubes in flour. When pan is hot, add steak cubes in batches (probably 2) to the skillet to brown only (do not cook them through), turning onto at least two sides, about 2-3 minutes total. Do not burn. Remove from pan and set aside.
4. Add the escarole and the sliced onions to the soup broth and continue to simmer for just about 3 minutes until the greens are cooked (about 5-7 minutes). If you’re making this ahead, cool at this point and refrigerate overnight. Add water to soup if it seems too thick.
5. Taste for seasoning (add salt or pepper as needed). The onions will still have just a tiny bit of crunch. Turn off heat and add the steak to the simmering soup.
6. Meanwhile, turn oven on to broil. Sprinkle parmesan cheese on top of each baguette slice and broil toasts just until bubbly and browned around the edges.
7. Scoop soup into wide flat bowls and place Parmesan Toasts (2 per serving) on top. Serve immediately.
Per Serving (assumes you consume all the marinade, so this is way off): 623 Calories; 45g Fat (65.7% calories from fat); 21g Protein; 32g Carbohydrate; 5g Dietary Fiber; 63mg Cholesterol; 2597mg Sodium.
A year ago: White Lady (a fancy drink)
Toffeeapple
said on February 23rd, 2009:
That looks good, but I had to investigate Escarole. It’s what we call Endive, a great winter vegetable. Interesting that the meat spends little time in the pot, I’m used to having it cook for a long time at a low heat. I guess that the difference is the cut of meat.
Really, it’s called endive in the UK? I’m surprised . . . escarole here looks like green leaf lettuce, or more like boston lettuce. But it has a bit tougher leaf. It doesn’t have any frilly tendril leaves at all, like I think “lettuce” type endive is here. Next time I might just add spinach to this, since the escarole was moderately hard to find. And yes, the meat doesn’t spend much time in the pot – I didn’t want to make it “well done,” but since I was splurging to use steak-quality meat in a soup, I wanted to eat it medium-rare. If you want it more cooked, you could, but it does get tough once it goes from done to anything past that. . . Carolyn T