For the people of rural Appalachia in yesteryear, beef did not figure prominently in daily diet. While most families owned one or two milk cows, and while milk, butter, cheese, and buttermilk were of considerable importance, beef seldom appeared on the menu. They may even have owned other cattle, but if they were so blessed the livestock was used as draft animals to plow, pull sleds, help with logging, use in road building, and the like. Moreover, pork was far easier to preserve than beef, not to mention that hogs required far less care, were hardier, and had the capability of “running wild” while fattening themselves up during the fall. Still, beef began to creep into Appalachian menus with increasing frequency during and after the Depression, and inclusion of a selection of recipes featuring the meat (mostly the cheaper cuts or in ground form) seems appropriate. Beef is, of course, far more prominent in today’s Appalachian cooking.
VEGETABLE BEEF SOUP
Take whatever leftover vegetables you might have in the refrigerator (corn, field peas, limas, green beans, or the like) and combine with other basic vegetables after they have cooked. Begin by chopping up a whole onion, several stalks of celery, a few carrots, and a couple of potatoes. Cook in beef broth (you can buy canned broth, use the paste which mixes with water, or buy bones to make your own) until almost tender. At that point, if you like them (I do), add two or three sliced turnips. They don’t take nearly as long to cook as the other veggies so should be introduced in the cooking process relatively late. Meanwhile, brown ground beef in a bit of olive oil. When it is completely browned, add it and the leftover vegetables to the cooked ones. Salt and pepper to taste and allow to simmer slowly for an hour or so in order for the flavors to blend. Served with a big piece of cornbread this makes a fine meal.
JC
—Celebrating Southern Appalachian Food written by Jim Casada and Tipper Pressley
Today’s Thankful November giveaway is a slightly damaged but new copy of Celebrating Southern Appalachian Food written by Jim Casada and Tipper Pressley. To be entered in the giveaway leave a comment on this post. Giveaway ends November 17, 2024. There will be two winners for this giveaway.
Tipper
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I grew up on a farm but we didn’t have beef cattle. Pigs and deer were what we mostly had in the way of meats. We grew about 5 acres of vegetables though so that was mainly what we ate. To this day I love vegetables more than meat. Jim’s vegetable beef soup was a favorite at our house.
Yum, vegetable beef soup sounds good. I usually make it more than a few times during the cold seasons. I also add my home canned tomato juice.
I haven’t had vegetable beef soup in a long time. his recipe sounds delicious. I must try it some time.
I love vegetable beef soup and also beef pot roast. I’d rather have beef than chicken, but that’s just my preference. There isn’t much of any kind of food that I don’t eat. Thanks for making me want to make a pot of homemade vegetable beef soup and muffins tomorrow. I’ll be thinking about you as I enjoy every spoonful!
I’ve been wanting your cookbook for quite some time and would be very thankful for a copy.
Little bits of leftover veggies, potatoes, pasta, rice, gravy, and so on made up what got put in a “soup pot” container in the freezer. When the container got full, we made soup in the general way that your recipe is described. Always an interesting mix and Mom knew how to season it to make it a very satisfying soup. Some fresh hot biscuits or muffins and it hit the spot on a cold fall/winter day.
There is nothing tastier than vegetable soup during cold weather. I ways add some type of beef to it to make it taste better. I could eat this with cornbread daily!
So many great stories and memories in the comments! I can’t say I’ve had a lot of vegetable soup in my time, but speaking of beef soups–my grandma would make a beef and dumpling soup (she hated chicken and she was from the Midwest where beef is ubiquitous). It had carrots, potatoes, big & fluffy (but sometimes dense)rounded dumplings, and a clear beefy broth. It’s a bit different than the gravy-like bases I see when I look up pictures of beef and dumpling soup on the internet. I absolutely hated it when I was a child but now that I’m older I find myself nostalgic for a bowl of her beef and dumpling soup (as well as the warmth, restoration, and coziness that can only come from a grandma’s kitchen).
Love knowing they look to see what leftovers they have available before deciding what to add to the soup. Usually I notice that I have to many little dabs of this and that and then say it’s time to make soup.
I ate a lot of homemade veggie soup growing up, when I make it I am the only one that will eat it, wife will eat the veggies but won’t touch the soup.
Its always so very interesting reading your blog and watching your you tube channel. Love learning about the ways of the past. We are in the center of the state of NC, and I find that so many of our ways of eating are the same. Lots of good cooking. Thankful for wonderful cooks in my past. My grandmothers and my momma.
What a coincidence. I made vegetable beef soup last week, but I’m always game for a new take on an old favorite.
My Momma talked about never having beef as a child.
before we moved to a house with electric, a soup pot was ALWAYS on the cook stove…momma called it 9 days soup …don’t really know why.. maybe cause it would take 9 days to eat? i really don’t know, but whatever veggie leftovers we had from supper went into the soup pot and every couple days momma would add a jar or tomato juice or some canned tomatoes to it.. it was usually what we ate for dinner with crackers or corn bread and of course if us younguns got hungry before supper we could count on a hot bowl of soup…sometimes she’d throw a little barley in it once in a while if we’d had rice for breakfast and didn’t eat it all the leftover rice went in it…never quite knew what was gonna be in it…and at least once a week if not more often there was a pot of soup beans cooking…but funnily enough, the soup beans never got mixed into the soup…but we had every other veggie in it 🙂
My crowd loves homemade soup, any kind. It is especially good in the winter time with peanut butter and apple jelly sandwich or grilled cheese sandwich. Steaming bowl of soup or stew warms you up on the inside. Love and prayers to all of you and Granny, too.
Good story!
Tipper, when I watch your cooking videos, it reminds me of the food I grew up eating. Even though some of the methods in how you prepare the dishes are slightly different from how my mom cooked them, it still reminds me of good memories from childhood when my mom would cook delicious homemade meals.
I love coming to your page! I never know what treat lies in store for me! I love vegetable soup made with beef! I am happy with chuck roast or any roast or ground beef, any cut works! My only “need” is cabbage! I don’t believe my Mom ever made it without. I have, but it is just not the same. LOL I’m 73 and love your family and all the videos! I would love to have a copy of your book!
Thank you! Continued prayers for all and you and yours❤❤
This recipe sounds like a great one for my grandson and I to make together. He has always been cooking, started out on his Mama’s hip!
Tipper, if I get picked as one of the winners of this drawing I want you to send my cookbook to Ashley B. Reading her comment in the last post to win one of your cookbooks really touched my heart so I’m commenting today for another chance to win for her! ❤
Love vegetable soup!
I would love to win a copy of your cookbook! Your food always looks so good and I love watching you cook! I’m 71 years old and I learn a lot from you! Thanks to you and Jim for your wonderful writings and presentations!
We had hamburgers with ground beef from the store occasionally after we got electricity. I was probably in about third grade then. I think I may have been near high school age when we got the first freezer and began to butcher a beef each year. Before that it was pork, chicken, fish and the wild game in season.
I would love a copy of your cookbook!
Nothing like a pot of veggie soup in winter just add some beer or sausage. I have several jars canned ready for coming cold.
Hi Tipper! I bought yours and Jim’s cookbook when it came out and have made several dishes from it, so I don’t need a new one. I absolutely love beef stew! Love it! Reading the recipe above made me think I want to make some today. The temp will only go to 68 today so even though that’s not exactly cold, it’s still in the 60’s, ha ha. I hope everyone has a great day and God showers us all in blessings!!
Your stories and recipes are the first ones I read daily. You were indeed Blessed with a wonderful Family growing up. I would Love to Win one of Your Cookbooks Tipper.
Sounds good to me. When you fix a big pot of vegetables, it goes a long way. If your like us, we eat on it for a good 2 to 3 days. Of course, you gotta have Cornbread to go with it. (yummy) .
Back in the mid 70s I took a class from Sam Hilliard at LSU. That was shortly after his Hog Meat & Hoecake was first published. It was the first serious look at the history of foodways in the American South before the Civil War. That book is the place to start for anyone with a serious interest in the history and geography of eating in Appalacia. I just saw that the University of Georgia published a paperback version more than 40 years after I first read it.
There is nothing like a pot of soup made from bones and whatever you have in your vegetable drawer.
Nothing better than a good bowl of soup in the fall. We used to call this, clean out the refrigerator soup.
I save leftover vegetables from dinner in a butter bowl in the freezer, and we have vegetable soup whenever the bowl gets full. I use canned deer meat in my soup rather than beef, and the soup has been a hit in my family. This is the best way I’ve found to reduce kitchen waste and avoid throwing away uneaten food.
There’s nothing better than a pot of homemade soup any way you fix it and some good ole cornbread. Real comfort food!!
I just made some vegetable beef soup using a leftover roast and cleaning out the refrigerator of leftover veggies. It was wonderful. Such a comfort food!
The only beef we ate in my childhood was round steak. No, not the rump of a cow, round steak. It came in a long roll or cord as we called it. It said it was beef but I’m not so sure. I don’t think it would have been good with vegetables in a soup but who knows. I do know it was good cut up in pieces, fried until it was almost burnt on both sides then used to make the first S in SOS.
PS: We called it a cord because Daddy would carry it across his shoulder like a stick of cordwood.
I never ate beef until I was a teenager on a date at a local dairy bar that served hamburgers. My vegetable soup has got to be made with plenty of cabbage and home-canned tomatoes. It just doesn’t taste the same when I run out of tomatoes and have to use store-bought. A can of corned beef and a pone of cornbread make the soup a meal fit for a king.
I collect cookbooks, love reading and trying new recipes.
Remember in the 80’s Wendy’s commercial “where’s the beef” promoting their hamburger? Ate lots of beef then but too expensive today!
Thanks for JC’s soup recipe! Everyone have a great day!
Homemade vegetable soup is the best! My mother grew up in a coal town in KY and beef was a rare treat. They had chicken on Sunday and vegetables, beans and cornbread during the week. In the fall, they butchered a hog and my grandfather had pork for breakfast before he left to work in the mine and after work he farmed. I still miss my mother’s cornbread, and I would love to win a copy of your cookbook.
Can’t wait to try the Vegetable Soup recipe! My children live out of state and when they come to visit, I always try to have a big pot of homemade soup for them. Nothing speaks love like sharing a big bowl of soup and cornbread around the table with them on a cold winters evening. Would love to have a copy of your cookbook and try more of your and Jim’s good recipes.
I would love to have your cookbook, not only for the recipes, but for the stories.
Our family eats a lot soup with cornbread.
I like your beef soup recipe. Great way to clean out the frig.
I’ve never tried the turnips, but my veggie beef soup usually has corn- most often frozen, but I have used canned too. I will add home canned tomatoes if I have plenty, otherwise I use store bought cans and save the ones I put up for spaghetti sauce.
Would love to win your cook book!
Love to read your posts!
Joanna Spears
I love veggie soup!
Even as recently as in my time, I don’t remember eating beef much when I was spending summers with my family in Western NC. Summers were mostly vegetables, buttermilk, and bacon, other pork or chicken (when we ate meat at all). I don’t even recall eating cornbread as much as I’d have liked because the oven heated up the house too much. When we had meat, as often as not one of the men would cook it on the grill. I sure didn’t feel I did without not having beef.
We would occasionally have fried cube steak with gravy on Sundays but other that it was chicken or pork if we had meat. Dried beans was often the fare. i still love them!
Yhis soup sounds delicious!! I would love to explore your cook book. Thank you for sharing.
I’ll say it gain, I read cookbooks like novels!
Would love a copy of your cookbook!! I have several church cookbooks and enjoy them far better than looking recipes up online. I hate that the screen goes black with particular recipes. Have a blessed day!!
Would love to have a copy of your cookbook. Thank you for the many hours you spend creating your art for our enjoyment. I have really learned a lot of yesteryear.
Soup weather’s coming. Can’t beat a big bowl of vegetable soup. I’m sure there are plenty of good soup recipes in your book.
Your post instantly took me back to my Grannys. She would cook veggie soup on her wood cook stove. It would simmer slow all day. It had all kinds of vegatables in it, and if we were able to afford it we got to add the ground beef. By the time it was ready to eat we were starved to death just from the smell. I dont know what it is about cooking on a woodstove but everything tastes and smells better. In elementery school that was my favorite lunch day. They served it with a peanut butter sandwich. To this day that is how I still eat it and still is one of my favorite meals. I really enjoy your posts and youtube channel. If I cant remeber how Granny or Mom cooked something I go to your site or channel and look for the recipe. It really keeps my memories alive about my family espically the ones that have left.
My mom made wonderful refrigerator soup, hamburger plus whatever needed using up. Refrigerator soup is still one of my favorites. Add cornbread for a perfect meal. However, I’ve never made anything as good as my grandma’s cornbread. I didn’t know there was any other kind besides southern cornbread bread till I had the sweet stuff in the college cafeteria. Give me my grandma’s cornbread any day.
That recipe looks simple and comforting. Beef has always been my favorite type of meat!
My grandparents raised hogs. I can still smell the fresh sausage cooking before we canned it. They also had a chicken house. Sunday chicken and dumplings were the very best!
Got up this morning with the temperature in the 30’s. A warm bowl of soup would be just the ticket for today.
I used to do this but have not in a long time. Rinse out a 1/2 gallon milk carton and keep it in the freezer. No matter how small the left over veggies are put them in the carton and cover with 1/2 inch water. Keep the top of the carton closed. When it gets full or whenever, add stew beef, hamburger, or whatever and make some soup. I always added a large can of tomatoes too. I would love a book.
The first thing I do every morning is read your post. Never read one I didn’t like! Brings back memories and gives me new one. I didn’t learn to like vegetable soup until I was an adult. My Mom made very bland soup. Then she started adding barbecue sauce and I fell in love with vegetable soup. Last night I made potato soup and plan on making
Chicken cheesy chowder later this week. Love the fall and winter when I can make soup often. Love to all your family!
I’d love to have your cookbook!
I also get Jim Canada’s newsletter and enjoy both of your writings. Hope I win!
This observation is so true! Growing up, we had a milk cow and were blessed with rich raw milk, butter and buttermilk. Our cheese came in thin yellow slices from Cas Walker’s supermarket though. I don’t think my mother ever cooked a roast and no steak for sure. We did have chicken, hamburgers and meatloaf pretty often. Pork was plentiful too, rounded out with lots of vegetables from the garden and cornbread, biscuits and gravy. Mother also made yeast rolls and donuts occasionally. Okay, I’m hungry now.
We tend to use venison more than beef with today’s meat prices. When I was young, I remember my grandparents using more venison, pork, and chicken but grandma could make a really good beef meatloaf!
Love to have this cookbook.
I would love to browse a slightly damaged copy of your cookbook while sipping hot vegetable soup. Ahhh Happy November!
Soup sounds delicious. I love soup and cornbread! Take care and God bless!
Soup season is upon us with the cooler temps starting to begin. Since the prices of beef has steadily increased we look for ways to stretch our menu and get more than one meal from it. Nothing like re-heating a bowl of homemade vegetable soup or chili or even good ole soup beans.
That sounds yummy and simple to make! All the recipes you share from yours and Jim’s cookbook sound delicious!
Oh yes! That sounds so good! So glad y’all wrote that cookbook! So thankful for you & Jim!
Vegetable Soup is my favorite, although I never did acquire a taste for the beef in mine. One time when I was sick my SIL brought us a bowl of vegetable soup with barley & cornbread. It sure was tasty & much appreciated. I’m very thankful to have a good supply of home canned vegetable soup put up for the coming months.
My mom’s beef stew and either cornbread or biscuits was always a favorite dinner this time of year. Or anytime for that matter.
Soup to me is cold weather fare. There is nothing better than to open the door to find the windows steamed and get a big whiff of soup or stew wafting through the house. It always makes me feel snug and secure. Btw, soup is good for digestion. It’s a win/win! Have a good day all and remember our dear friends still without homes or still missing loved ones washed asunder from that dreadful storm in NC, TN (and VA and WV too although less severe.) I pray God will raise up godly people for government, courts, schools, etc. Stay warm and ever watchful…
Home made soup is my favorite meal. Keep the body and soul warm.
I have an extra large family, and soup is always on our menu. It’s a cheaper way to fill many bellies ☺️ The only way we can afford to keep beef on our menu so buying a whole cow at the butcher for the freezer. We also have to buy a pig as well for our family size.
Thankful November has been fun! The cookbook would be wonderful to read and cook from! God bless your family
Soup is my favorite meal to make during the fall and winter months. My family loves veggie beef soup, chili bean soup, chicken veggie and chicken noodle soup, and many more. I love the simplicity of using ground beef and adding your leftover vegetables. Thank you for the recipe. Have a wonderful day everyone.
Ohhh…pick me, pick me! Cookbooks are my Kryptonite. Would love to have a copy of yours!
Some of the soups my family has liked best have been simplest and used leftover veggies. Thanks for the reminder of how to make what we’ve got taste great!
Meg
Enjoying your posts. They always bring to mind days of yore and ways that are oft forgotten now.
Vegetable soup is a staple in my home. If I don’t have meat or seasoning I may add a bit of butter or bacon grease for flavor. I like seasoned salt too. Many ways to change it up!
Homemade soups are the best. We used to live off soups, stews, chili, etc during the colder months. Actually we still do but not each day.
I love every veggie you can put in soup but not a fan of beef in it, so I leave it out. Sometimes I put chicken in it.
Sounds like the perfect meal on a cold day.
Mom made great vegetable beef stew but she usually just had potatoes instead of turnips. Once she used turnips instead of potatoes and was disappointed. I love raw turnips but I’m not so fond of them cooked. She only did it once and I remember it to this day some 57 years later lol.
Linda, my Daddy would make a very simple beef stew that would be more like soup that we all loved. I still cook it in a slow cooker and let it cook all day on low. It was simply putting beef stew meat in the pot, covering it with a good bit of water, adding peeled potatoes, carrots and some onion if you wanted too. The secret to the taste was to add a whole small bottle of ketchup. We liked to eat this over rice. He always would cook some sweet potatoes to go along with this. He called them “possum taters”. He would peel, slice them long ways, and boil the sweet potatoes until they were tender he would then put them in a baking dish and sprinkle a little black pepper, salt and sugar on top of the potatoes and add a small amount of stew liquid and bake them for a little while in the oven. When we cooked this , my wife would always make a homemade macaroni pie, not these fake Kraft dinners, to go along with this. Daddy always kept dried red pods of cayenne pepper on hand and would add a small pod to his stew. Be sure to salt and pepper the meat before cooking it. After writing this I feel a “craving” coming on, I love this stew.
We use to eat more beef than we do now. For my husband’s health it’s been removed pretty much from my diet, he’s vegan vegetarian, so no meat products and very, very little fat as well for him. But I still love a good steak and growing up we ate beef, pork and chicken. My uncle use to raise a steer every year and would process it along with my aunts help. The taste was different and so good from the beef bought in the grocery store. We both love a good vegetable soup with or without meat!
Cube steak and hamburger were the most common beef we ate. A roast on Sunday was a special treat. Cube steak always came with biscuits and gravy!! Hamburgers were cooked in Mama’s electric skillet.
I would so love to receive a copy of your book. Have a great day Tipper and family!
I love all soups on a chilly day!
Would love a copy of your cookbook!
Love your stories. They remind me so much of growing up and visiting relatives in the country.
like this
Reminds me of my Mommaw’s soup. She once sent me a quart jar of her soup for Valentines Day, with a homemade paper heart attached.
Would like to have your cookbook!
Both of our parents were raised like this. Momma was an excellent cook with beef, but she didn’t really care for it as she didn’t grow up eating it. I never remember eating beef at my maternal grandparent’s home.
Always interesting the ways of our people that we don’t think of until you bring it up. Thank you for sharing the recipe. It sounds a lot like ours.
Very interesting ! And the soup sounds wonderful! Thank you ! Looking forward to a cozy cooking season including trying recipes from your cookbook! Have a blessed day everyone!
What is always delicious on a cold rainy day? A pot of soup and a hot slice of cornbread. True comfort food.
With beef prices what they are today, beef isn’t a huge part of my diet anymore. I’ll buy ground beef, but I don’t grill steaks as often as I used to.
We never owned a beef cow when I growing up and didn’t eat much beef because it would have had to be bought. We lived beside of my Grandparents and they did have a milk cow until I was 5 or 6 years old. She would give more milk than they could use and shared it with us. I thought it was funny when they sold the cow and the man that bought her was trying to get her to load into the back of the pickup truck , he finally had to pinch her tail between two sticks before she would get into the truck. We ate a lot of vegetable soup, more often during the colder months, it would be tomato soup with vegetables such as corn, beans, okra, and potatoes but no meat added to it. I still do not want meat in vegetable soup. We would always have a pone of cornbread to crumble up in it. One time when I was still young, we were eating vegetable soup at my aunt’s home and I asked my Mother what a green pod of something in my bowl of soup was, she said it was okra, she lied to me, it was hot pepper. I would tease her about this for the rest of her life and we would laugh about it.
Pinching the cow’s tail between two sticks is a new one on me. Whatever works! It reminded me of a “twist” that I saw a blacksmith put on a mule’s lip to make it stand still while being shod. This was just a loop of cord or small rope with a wooden handle. Twists were sometimes put around the animal’s ear. Pressure made it stand, wide-eyed, until released. The owner did the twisting.
Gene, the man that did this had owned cows for many years and had learned many tricks. This is the way I remember it, he just picked up two sticks off the ground, each a little bit over a foot long and about 1 inch diameter and held one underneath the cows tail near the end and the other on top and one hand on each of the two ends making a clamp, he then squeezed down on the sticks with his hands. She was glad to jump in the truck. Remember in the past when farmers would make and put wooden cattle bodies on the beds on their pickup trucks and haul their cow or cows depending on the size of the cow in the back of their truck. As I said in my comment, at around 5 years old, I thought it was funny.