Beef noodle soup

This is one of my favorite cold day recipes, so it's sort of sad that we haven't had that many cold days this Winter, up until last week with the big snowfall we got. I said "sort of" because it's not really that sad...I would take warm Winters over any comfort food, but I did miss this soup! 

The base recipe is my mom's chicken noodle soup that she used to make for us as kids, I just switched it all to beef.  I still make the chicken noodle soup as well, but Justin seems to enjoy the beef better so it's a great thing to have a huge pot of it in the fridge for him for lunches during the week.

3-5 lb beef roast

2 bags no yolk egg noodles

2-3 cups carrots, cut up

2-3 cups celery, cut up

1 onion, diced

2 large jars beef broth (low sodium kind)

2 resealable containers beef broth

3-4 bay leaves

This is a very simple recipe to make on a cold Saturday afternoon.  As you can see by the ingredient list, you can add as much or as little of each veggie as you would like. Just throw your roast in the oven to bake at 375 for 1-1.5 hours or so, until it is a medium rare in the center. Dice your vegetables now. Put the 2 large jars of beef broth in a stock pot to bring to a boil with your bay leaves, and then add your vegetables to the pot. Cook at a rolling boil for 5-7 minutes, and then add the frozen noodles and boil for another 5-7 minutes.  Dice up your beef into bite sized pieces and add to the pot, now simmering for as long as you'd like.

The more it simmers, the more the noodles will soak up the broth, so you will have to continue to add more....but the more the noodles soak up, the better the soup will be, so this is a "good thing", as Martha Stewart would say.

Inevitably, the leftovers are better than the first bowl...I think the noodles break down a little after the soup cools and gives it a more substantial broth.  Whatever the reason, this is one of those recipes that gets better and better each day after it's made. I simply keep some beef broth in the fridge and keep adding it to the pot as the noodles soak it up.  This makes a fairly large batch so freezing it works perfectly so you don't even have to mess with making it next time!  Enjoy :)

These photos are a little blurry as the steam from the soup was fogging up my lense...but the taste of this soup with some oyster crackers and fresh cracked pepper is to die for, blurry pics or not!