A few weeks ago I went to visit my sister and folks in New Jersey. My sister Gail was cooking up a pot of soup for lunch that smelled pretty good. She had a lot of leftovers from the week including some leftover London Broil that she grilled up the night before.

This is one of those recipes that are just thrown together in the moment with leftovers in the refrigerator and the pantry. It’s one of my favorite ways of cooking. Finding creative ways to use up leftovers is not that hard and makes one night of cooking a lot easier.

My sister doesn’t own a real good soup pot so she had to saute all the vegetables in a fry pan and then transfer them to her inexpensive all-purpose pot. If she tried to saute in the thin-bottomed, inexpensive pot, there is a good chance she would have burned them and ruined the soup.

I try using as few pans as possible when I cook at home. There is enough stuff to do with the kid’s homework and getting them ready for bed. I don’t need to be cleaning any extra pans. Nor does my sister, so I have a good idea what to get her for Christmas this year. I’ll have to go back and read my article on Choosing and Buying a Good Soup Pot.

My sister used leftover London Broil, which is really a cooking method and not a cut of beef but most of us have associated it with a top round roast that can be cooked whole, cut in half or cut into steaks. Any leftover cooked beef would work well in this recipe.

Leftover Beef & Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

3 onions, peeled and diced
2 stalks of celery, diced
1 package mushrooms 12 – 14 oz, chopped
6 fresh carrots, peeled and diced
4 tablespoons butter (½ stick)
6 cups of beef broth (my sister used 3 cans of College Inn beef stock but I recommend homemade or try Glace de Viande Gold)
1 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce
3 sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
Beef leftovers – any kind of steak cubed
¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper
Salt & pepper, to taste
1 can black beans with liquids, approximately 15 oz.
1 can red kidney beans with liquids, approximately 15 oz.

Preparing at Home

In a large soup pot, saute the onions, carrots and celery in the butter over medium-high heat for about 7 to 8 minutes.

Add the beef stock, Worcestershire sauce, and sweet potatoes. Bring to a boil and then lower heat to simmer.

Add the cooked beef to the pot, crushed red pepper and season with a little salt & pepper. Simmer for � hour with the cover on.

Remove the cover, add the black and red beans and simmer for an additional ½ hour to 1 hour with the cover off.

Taste and adjust seasoning with salt & pepper.

Options Try using any leftover vegetables you might have around. This is a great soup to clean out�your refrigerator of leftovers.

This is one of the easiest shortcut meals you can make when you just don’t feel like cooking or don’t have a lot of time. My kids usually like the sauce but if the moon is full and they are not in the mood for it, I can still serve them pasta with butter and a little Parmesan cheese on top.

My wife isn’t eating pasta this month so the sauce is enough for her to eat as a meal. Serve it up with a vegetable and/or salad and you have a quick and easy meal.

Now if you had the time, you could make the sauce from scratch but then I couldn’t call this a shortcut meal. You could even make the pasta from scratch but then you are really going out of your way to your destination. It’s a nice trip but takes awhile.

My shortcut is to find a jarred pasta sauce that you really like that doesn’t taste fake or commercial. Is there anything as good as homemade? I don’t think so but there are some very good products on the market especially when you need something quick.

I like using a 26 oz jar of Classico Four Cheese tomato sauce made by Di Parma. My kids like it and I can purchase it at Costco but I’m sure there are plenty of other decent brands out there. Once you add the sausage, it doesn’t really matter because the meat adds a lot of flavor. - What’s Your Favorite Commercial pasta sauce?

How to Make Pasta with Sausage Tomato Sauce

To make this shortcut meal at home, brown some sweet or mild sausage. You can purchase it loose or in sausage links, it doesn’t matter. Just be careful to check the package to make sure it is not hot sausage.

I thought I was buying sweet sausage and the label said sweet sausage but when I got home, half the sausage was hot. No way I was going back out so I made the sauce hoping my kids would eat it. They tried but quickly brought to my attention how hot it was.

If using sausage links, squeeze the sausage meat  into a good sized sauce pan. Brown the meat, add your favorite sauce and let it cook for 5 to ten minutes. That’s it. Quick, easy and delicious.

Because the sauce is thick, I like to serve it with penne pasta but you can use whatever you and your kids like. Serve it with freshly grated Parmesan cheese to give it another layer of flavor and you have a nice meal.

Great for lunch the next day too.

Another Great Shortcut Meal

Another “shortcut meal” I pulled together this week was prepared by sautéing some boneless, skinless chicken breasts in olive oil and butter and finishing in a commercial sauce I found at Whole Foods.

The Tikka Masala Sauce is from Maya Kaimal’s line of products.  She is an expert on Indian food and has appeared on Martha Stewart, the Food Network and the Today Show, and writes about Indian cooking for “Saveur” and “Food & Wine“.

I love Indian food but I don’t have much experience making it at home. I do know you use a lot of spices I don’t usually keep in the house and how important these spices are to create the exquisite flavor.

Tikka Masala sauce is a classic creamy tomato-based curry, mildly spiced with cinnamon, cardamom and clove. It’s great on chicken but works well with fish or vegetables.

(more…)