Category: Cooking with Me

Beef Soup

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I love cooking, and I have promised to post some of my recipes.

This is something my mama used to make us every winter. I love it so much.

Ingredients

  • 2 onions
  • 2 gloves of garlic
  • 5 stalks of celery
  • 4 carrots
  • 4 parsnips
  • 4 potatoes (peeled)
  • 1 pound of stewing beef, or any type of beef
  • 8 cups of beef broth
  • salt and pepper
  • 1 tsp parsley
  • 1 tsp orageno
  • 1 tsp basil
  • 1 tsp thyme
  • 1 tsp rosemary
  • 1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
  • 3 bay leaves

This recipe serves about 12, which works for me because I live with four other people. Make some adjustments if needed.

I cook this in my crock pot, and I’m able to cook everything inside the pot of the crock pot. If anything you might need to use another pot to cook everything in.

Directions

  1. Peel and wash the carrots, parsnips, and potatoes.
  2. Next slice them into smaller pieces.
  3. Wash and slice celery, onions, and garlic.
  4. Cut the beef into smaller pieces.
  5. Heat up the crock pot, or cooking pot on medium-heat. When hot enough, begin browning the beef. Add a bit of salt and pepper
  6. When it’s no longer pink, add the onions, and garlic
  7. Let that cook for five minutes.
  8. Add celery and let that cook for another three minutes.
  9. Add carrots, parsnips, and potatoes, let that cook for five minutes.
  10. Add the spices, and Worcestershire sauce.
  11. I actually use 4 beef bouillons, and eight cups of water. Although I add the water first, and let it get hot, before adding the cubes.
  12. Give it a taste test, and sure you are satisfied.
  13. Add in your bay leaves.
  14. I would recommend that you let it cook on low for at least six hours, you can even do eight, or ten hours, if you have the time. Although if you are pressed for time, you can cook on high for four hours.
  15. Once done, remove bay leaves, and serve immediately!
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French Onion Soup

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As promised, I am posted a recipe that I made not too long ago. And since it’s Autumn, which is Soup Season! I’ll be posting some soup recipes in the upcoming weeks. This season I vow to make and eat new soup recipes. I love trying new foods.

Here is my chicken noodle soup recipe, threeyellowdaisies.ca/2020/06/16/chicken-noodle-soup-4/

French Onion soup is a really easy recipe. What I like about making it, is a lot of ingredients are already on hand. I always have onions and spices it requires.

Ingredients
8-10 small onions, or 6 large ones
3 tablespoons of unsalted butter
Salt and pepper
3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 teaspoons of thyme
2 teaspoons of basil
2 teaspoons of parsley
2 teaspoons of oregano
2 teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce
6 beef bouillon cubes
12 cups of water
1 cup of Sherry (optional)
Bay Leaves
French baguette
Gruyere cheese, shredded

Directions
1. Slice the onions in circular shapes
2. In large pot, or in your crock pot bring to melt the butter
3. Once melted, add the onions. Make sure your onions caramelized, usually takes about 20 to 30 minutes to become a golden brown
4. If you like to cook this in a crock pot, now is the time to transfer everything into your crock pot
5. Once everything has transferred into your crock pot, you can start making the broth
6. By using the same pot you had used to caramelize your onions, you help deglaze your pot, ensuring you have all of the amazing flavours of the spices in your soup.
7. Bring the 12 cups of water to a boil
8. Add all of your spices
9. Once the water is boiled, add your beef bouillons
10. Once dissolved you can transfer the broth to the crock pot
11. You can allow this to cook on low for 8 to 12 hours, or on high for 5 hours, although this is the best soup to slow cook, so I always prefer to slow cook
12. When the soup is ready to be served, you can begin to shred some cheese to place on your baguette. I like to butter the baguette with garlic butter
13. If you have any ovenproof bowls, you can serve your soup in that, and place your baguette on top. Allow it to broil for 3-4 minutes.
14. If you don’t have any ovenproof bowls you can let the baguette broil on a baking sheet. Cut in portions to place on top of the soup.

Chopped onions
Onions with the spices
Final product of the soup.

My crock pot has a setting that lets me sautee and brown my ingredients, so I don’t necessarily have to use another pot to cook my meats, or sautee anything and then transfer everything over into my crock pot.

I am so happy because next time I make this again, I will be able to use my French Onion Soup Bowls that my mama gave me. I am so excited! 🙂

Chicken Noodle Soup

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My roommate, who is my boyfriend’s friend asked me to make us chicken noodle soup, because he loves when I make it. And who doesn’t love chicken noodle soup?! My ingredients make about 10 servings, so you can increase or decrease your ingredients.

Ingredients

3 chicken breasts (or more depending on how many people there are), although you can make this with any type of chicken (thighs, leftover rotisserie chicken)

2 onions

6 carrots

6 potatoes

4 stalks of celery

Garlic

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

1 tsp Oregano

Basil leaves

Bay leaves

1 tsp Parsley

Chicken bouillon cubes and water or chicken broth

Rotini pasta noodles

Ingredients are ready to go!

Directions

  1. Peel the carrots and potatoes
  2. Wash and cut them. I cut my potatoes in eighths, and my Grandma taught me to slice carrots on angle, so the sugars stay in tact.
  3. Thoroughly rinse your celery, and begin chopping into small pieces.
  4. Begin dicing the onions. My tip is after you remove the outer skin, I like to run it under cold water before slicing it. I feel like that prevents your eyes from watering.
  5. After that I begin cutting my chicken, although others may have their own methods of slicing and cooking the chicken.
  6. I begin heating up my crock pot. When heated, I add olive oil and wait a few minutes to add the chicken. Once the oil is hot enough, I place the chicken in my crock pot. I then season it with salt and pepper.
  7. When it is no longer pink, I add the onions and garlic.
  8. Once the onions and garlic become fragrant, I add the celery. Be sure to move everything around after you added a new ingredient.
  9. I begin adding in all of my spices (except for the bay leaves).
  10. I add the potatoes and carrots, and let that cook for a few minutes
  11. Add in the water. I use six cubes of chicken bouillon, so I have to add 12 cups of water. Once the water is boiling, I add the cubes.
  12. Once the cubes dissolved, I give everything a final stir, before I add a handful of bay leaves.
  13. I program my crock pot on low for eight hours (or you can even set it on low for five hours, if you are pressed for time), or on high for four hours.
  14. After it has cooked for its programmed time, I add about 2 cups of noodles. I do my final taste test, to ensure the broth is just perfect. Now is the perfect time to make any adjustments. If you added too much salt, you can add a few drops of lemon juice, or a couple of squeezes of a lemon in the soup. Or if you feel like there isn’t enough spices, feel free to add more. The acidity of the lemon removes the salty taste. Cook on high for 30 minutes.
  15. After the 30 minutes are up, it is ready to go.
  16. Discard the bay leaves.
  17. Serve with some dinner rolls or crackers, if desired.
Cooking up the chicken, celery, onions and garlic.
Carrots, potatoes and spices are added! Picture before the broth is prepped.
The final product after our first serving.
My scrumptious bowl of soup!

Ratatouille

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Hi again! Today, my boyfriend and I made ratatouille. It is such a delicious meal. It is all vegetables so it’s also healthy for you as well.

Ratatouille is a stew that originated from Nice, France, and it is the perfect summer dish.

We normally make this in the oven, but today we made it in our crock pot. I will provide the instructions if you don’t have a crock pot below.

Ingredients

1 medium eggplant

2 zucchini

3 stalks of celery

3 bell peppers (yellow, orange and red), although you could add a green pepper if you like, but this is what I had on hand, at the time.

1 tomato

2 onions

Garlic

Pasta sauce, or diced tomatoes, your preference

Basil

Orageno

Parsley

Salt and pepper

Directions

  1. Wash all of your vegetables.
  2. Start chopping all of the vegetables.
  3. My crock pot allows me to fry up my ingredients before I begin to slow cook my food. So I began to preheat my crock pot. If you don’t have a crock pot, a frying pan works fine, too.
  4. Once preheated, I added the oil and wait for it to heat up, before I added the onions and celery.
  5. Next, I began frying up the onions, once fragment, I added the garlic and celery.
  6. Add about a teaspoon of each spice (basil, parsley, oregano, salt and pepper).
  7. Once evenly coated, I add the eggplant, and allow that to fry up a bit.
  8. After that I added the sauce and tomatoes or you can substitute for just diced tomato.
  9. Finally I added the bell peppers.
Since I bought a huge eggplant, my boyfriend sliced them in quarters.
I diced the bell peppers.
My boyfriend sliced the tomatoes since they would shrink when they are cooking.
I thinly sliced up the zucchinis in slices.
My boyfriend diced up two onions.
I forgot to take a photo of the chopped up celery, but at least it is in this photo. The finished touches of dinner.
The crock pot settings I used are Brown to 15 minutes on low temperature. This is what I used to heat up the vegetables.
In here I added the olive oil, onions, garlic, celery, spices, eggplant, and the zucchinis. In that exact order.
This is what it looked like after adding the sauce, tomatoes and bell peppers.

Cover it for four hours on high or six hours on low.

The finished touch!
Bon appetite!

If you don’t have a crock pot, it’s a very similar process. Begin by preheating the oven to 350 degrees. You still cook your onions, garlic and celery in the frying pan. You can even heat up your sauce with the onions if you like. In a oven safe tray, coat the bottom of it with olive oil and a little sauce (enough to just cover the bottom of the tray). You can also get decorative about how you place each vegetable in the tray., totally up to you. I’ve always done a pattern. I would place it on the outside of the tray, and work my to the centre of the tray. Top off with the remaining sauce or diced tomatoes. Cover the dish with aluminium foil and cook for 45 minutes. Or you can cook it for 35 minutes, uncover and shred cheese on top and broil for 10 minutes, if desired.

Some recipes allow you to cook this in frying pan, if you prefer that instead. What I love about this recipe is the many options you can cook this dish. And you can add many different vegetables. Feel free to add your own pizzazz to this. It’s one of those dishes where you can express your creativity. It’s also a good dish to use up your vegetables if they are about to go bad.

It’s a tasty vegetarian dish, too or even one to have on Meatless Mondays.

I love having a baguette or some dinner rolls with this dish.

Vegetable Enchiladas

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My boyfriend and his family and I made this dish for dinner.

We fried the onions with the bell peppers and then set that aside. Next we used another frying pan to boil tomato soup with vegetable stock, cumin, garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Then whilst that is boiling we put the onions and bell peppers in a tortillas with shredded cheese. Rolled it up and dip it in the sauce and then added more cheese on top.

And then place in the oven for 15-20 minutes. It was delicious.