Ground beef, pearl couscous and vegetables soup
- Preparation 25 min
- Cooking 55 min
- Servings 6 to 8
- Freezing Absolutely
Ads
🍂 An autumn fridge clean-out soup
This one came straight out of the back of my fridge on a fall Sunday. I had spent the afternoon outside raking leaves, and I walked back in with one idea: treat myself to a new soup. A real one. The kind that fills you up, not a thin broth you sip while waiting for dinner. I pulled out whatever was hanging around: two parsnips, celery, a small acorn squash, a pack of ground beef. A fridge clean-out soup in the strictest sense. My boys loved it, and that is about the best test I know.
🍲 The pearl couscous cooks on its own, and goes in at the very end
Pearl couscous, Israeli couscous: same grain, two names. Little rolled beads of semolina, nothing like the fine grains of Moroccan couscous. I love the stuff, and it shows up all over the site, from my maple pork medallions to my Brazilian chicken. Here it does not cook in the soup. It gets its own small saucepan, its own water, and it joins the pot at the very last minute, along with the corn. One step not to skip before adding the water: I toast it for two minutes in a drizzle of olive oil. That gives it a nutty flavour and keeps the beads separate instead of letting them clump together.
🥕 Parsnip, acorn squash and a bowl with real chew
What makes this bowl different is the vegetables. Not the carrot-and-potato duo you see everywhere: parsnip, sweet with a bit of pepper to it, and acorn squash diced so it softens without disappearing. Add the ground beef and the couscous on top and you get a properly chunky soup. You have to chew it. That is the point. And it freezes without complaining: I fill individual containers, pull one out in the morning, and lunch is handled. When reheating, a splash of beef broth brings it right back to where it was.
Ads
Ads
🥩 Cook the beef, do not boil it
Forget about browning it here. It lands in a pot where the vegetables have been cooking for seven or eight minutes: it will not brown, and honestly, it does not matter. What matters is that it cooks without boiling. Medium heat, break the meat up with a spoon as it cooks, salt and pepper right away. If it starts bubbling hard before the tomatoes and broth go in, turn the heat down.
🫗 Keep the fat
A Chinese macaroni and a soup are two different animals. In my Chinese macaroni, I drain. Here, I do not: the fat from the beef carries the broth and adds flavour. The one exception is beef that is genuinely too fatty. In that case spoon some of it off, but not all of it.
🍲 Why the couscous cooks in its own pot
In my vegetables and barley soup I do the exact opposite. The barley cooks right in the broth, on purpose, because its starch thickens everything. Not here. Pearl couscous releases a lot more of it. Cook it in the broth and the soup thickens too much, closer to a stew than to a soup. So it cooks on the side, in its own water, and it goes in at the very end. You keep a real soup, with actual broth, and grains that hold their shape.
⏱️ Do not overcook the pearl couscous
This is the only thing that can really go wrong in this recipe. Ten minutes covered, low heat, and you stop it al dente. Overcooked pearl couscous turns fat, thick and unpleasant, and it keeps swelling once it hits the soup. Taste a bead before taking it off the heat: if it still gives a little resistance, you are exactly where you want to be.
🧂 Season at every step
Salt and pepper with the vegetables. Salt and pepper with the beef. Salt and pepper with the broth. An underseasoned soup cannot be fixed once it is in the bowl.
🎃 Peeling an acorn squash without losing a finger
The ridges are what make it a pain. I always peel mine with a knife: cut it in half, scoop out the seeds, lay each half flat on the board and take the skin off in strips. A good peeler will do the job too. A flimsy one skips right over the grooves and you end up going back over the same spot three times.
🌾 Barley instead of couscous, yes, but not on the same clock
It works, except raw pearl barley needs about thirty minutes of cooking against about ten for pearl couscous. If you make the swap, start it much earlier. And if barley is really what you are after, I have a soup in the same family: my vegetables and barley soup. Careful though, it is not the same recipe: no couscous, different vegetables, and no ground beef in it.
✅ What to serve with my ground beef, pearl couscous and vegetables soup?
A baguette and your favourite margarine, and I do not look any further than that. Dip, eat, repeat. If you want to stretch the meal, a sharply dressed green salad holds its own next to a bowl this filling. And once you have worn this one out, my Tuscan soup with beef, vegetables and red ale beer, my deluxe soup with sausage, vegetables and grilled haloumi and my lasagna soup with Maudite beer all play in the same league.
Ads
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cups (310 ml) pearl couscous
- 1 3/4 cups (430 ml) water
- Olive oil
- 1 small yellow onion, finely chopped
- 3 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped
- 2 large parsnips, peeled, quartered lengthwise and sliced
- 4 celery stalks, sliced
- 1 small acorn squash, peeled and seeds removed, diced
- 550 g (1 1/4 lb) lean ground beef
- 1 can of 796 ml diced tomatoes
- 1 tablespoon (15 ml) Italian spices
- 1 teaspoon (5 ml) dried thyme
- 1 teaspoon (5 ml) dried basil
- 6 cups (1.5 L) beef broth
- 1/2 cup (125 ml) frozen corn
- Freshly ground salt and pepper
Ads
Preparation
- In a small saucepan heated over medium heat, place the couscous and drizzle with some olive oil. Mix and cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly.
- Add water, stir and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 10 minutes or until the water is absorbed and the couscous al dente. Remove from heat and set aside.
- In a large pot heated over medium heat, add the onion and garlic and drizzle some olive oil. Cook, stirring, for 3 to 4 minutes.
- Add the parsnip, celery, squash, a good drizzle of olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring constantly, 7 to 8 minutes.
- Add the ground beef and cook for 7 to 8 minutes. Break the meat into pieces. Season with salt and pepper.
- Add the diced tomatoes, spices, beef broth then season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and cover. Simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Add the corn and couscous then mix. Cook for 1 minute while stirring and then VOILÀ! Serve with a baguette and your favourite margarine.
Yes, but read on before you swap. Small short pasta shapes slot in without changing the timing at all. Pearl barley works too and tastes great, except it needs about thirty minutes of cooking instead of about ten. If you go with barley, start it much earlier, otherwise you end up with hard grains in a soup that is already done.
Same grain, two names that travel from one grocery store to the next. Little beads of wheat semolina, rolled and dried, roughly the size of a generous pinhead. Nothing like the fine grains of Moroccan couscous, which swell in boiling water without ever really cooking. You will see both names used across the site depending on the recipe, as in my maple pork medallions with Israeli couscous. It is the same product.
Yes, and there is nothing wrong with that. The pearl couscous keeps drinking up the broth as the soup cools. When reheating, add beef broth until you get the texture you like. It keeps four days in the refrigerator and three months in the freezer. Best move is to freeze it in individual portions: pull one out in the morning and lunch is sorted.
Overcooking the couscous. It is by far the most common one, and there is no coming back from it: the beads turn fat, thick and genuinely unpleasant, and they keep swelling in the broth on top of that. Stop them al dente. The other two traps are letting the beef boil instead of cooking it over medium heat, and not seasoning enough. Salt and pepper at every step, not just at the end.
A baguette and some margarine, that is how it goes at my place. Nothing complicated. For a dinner that stretches a bit longer, add a sharply dressed green salad to cut through how filling the bowl is. And if you are after more soups that actually fill you up, take a look at my Tuscan soup with beef, vegetables and red ale beer, my deluxe soup with sausage, vegetables and grilled haloumi or my vegetables and barley soup.
Ads
Ads
Ads
Ads
Ads