Beef and Mushroom Soup {Recipe}

Can I keep calling every recipe a favorite?  I think there is some kind of limit, right?  Oh well!  We all love this and my 3 year old asks for it and gets the most excited look on his face when I tell him we're having mushroom soup. 

This soup is very versatile in that you can add a variety of different vegetables to it and it will taste oh so very good.  I love having another successful soup recipe that uses beef broth.  We adore beef broth, but having the same 1 or 2 recipes all the time can get a little tiring.

I based this soup off of a paleo salisbury steak recipe that we LOVE.  LOVE love LOVE.  But like I said, I needed another beef broth based soup, so I gave this a try.  Not quite like a salisbury steak, but still delicious, satisfying, and very GAPS/Paleo friendly.  This is appropriate for GAPSters as soon as you can use herbs!!!  YAY! 

I will share the basic recipe and then some modifications and variations you can make. 

Beef and Mushroom Soup {Recipe} - Paleo/GAPS Stage 1+

Ingredients: 

• 2 Tbsp fat of your choice (butter, ghee, tallow, lard, coconut oil)
• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 medium-large onion, chopped
• 1 quart homemade beef broth 
•  2-3 Tbsp butter (or other fat)
• 1-2 lbs mushrooms - I used baby bella, sliced or quartered (use less or more mushrooms depending on how much you and your family like mushrooms)
• 3/4 tsp - 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tbsp thyme
• 1 tsp rubbed sage
• 1/2 tsp marjoram
• 1 tsp (plus more to taste) celtic or himalayan salt
• optional: 2-3 crushed cloves of garlic

Instructions: 

• In dutch oven or other soup pot, heat fat of your choice.  Brown ground beef.  When almost done, add chopped onion (and any other longer cooking vegetables you want to add such as carrots) and saute for a few minutes. 
• Add seasonings (garlic, thyme, sage, marjoram, and salt) and mix well. 
• Add beef broth, and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer.  
• While soup simmers, heat butter in a large skillet.  Saute mushrooms until nicely browned.  Once vegetables in the soup are almost tender, add browned mushrooms and simmer until vegetables are done.  Another option is to simply add mushrooms at the same time as the onions OR once you are simmering the soup if you don't care about sauteing the mushrooms in butter.  This can save time if you are in a hurry.  Just throw them in with everything else and simmer until vegetables and mushrooms are done! 
• Taste, and add salt and pepper as needed.  
• If using optional garlic cloves, once soup is done, add crushed garlic, bring back to a boil, stir, cover, and turn heat off.  Let soup sit about 10 minutes before serving.  
• Enjoy!  

Variations/Modifications: 

• Stage 1 or 2 GAPS intro: just omit herbs and do a simple mushrooms beef soup with any vegetables you can use! 
• Vegetables to add:  In the picture above, I added a few handfuls of spinach to my bowl and simply ladled the hot soup over the spinach.  It was hot enough to wilt the spinach, and I loved the spinach in the soup!  I honestly would put a ton of spinach in this every time, but our little ones won't eat spinach leaves in soup.  If you like kale in soups, it would be good in this as well.  For our little boys, we added already cooked green peas to their bowls, and they loved that!  Carrots are great in this soup also, just add with onions at the beginning. 
• Homemade sour cream/yogurt cream/yogurt is great added to this soup at the table!  Just make sure your soup has cooled down enough to not kill all the raw cultured goodness :-). 
• You can use stew meat instead of ground beef.  I have made this with stew meat and simply simmer the meat in broth and seasonings until cooked and tender.  Then I removed the stew meat and shredded it.  Add it back into the broth and continue with adding vegetables and mushrooms!  It was great, and it's nice to vary the texture of meats in soups when you eat soup a lot :-). 

Hope you enjoy!