Instant Pot: Vegetable Beef Soup

I went to the freezer to grab some meat for supper….I came across an oxtail.  Hmm…soup I think.  I never know how much meat is on them and I wanted to make a big batch of soup so I grabbed a package of sirloin steak.  Meat is something we get from the farmer that Hubby works for so using a steak to make soup is something I take for granted far to often.

I ended up putting the frozen steak and oxtail into the Instant Pot. I added 6 cups of water along with 4 Tablespoons of beef soup base, salt and pepper to taste.  I set it on meat for 60 minutes.  I needed that oxtail meat to fall off the bone….and after 60 minutes with a quick release, it was perfect.  I took the meat out of the pot, set it aside to cool, and then added ice cubes.  I always but ice cubes in the beef broth that I cook meat in.  The broth tends to be greasy and fatty.  If I put the ice cubes in the broth the fat adheres to the ice cubes.  Then once the fatty grease is stuck to the ice cubes, I scoop the ice cubes out and the fat comes with.

While the meat was cooking I prepped some veggies..Here’s what I put together:
1 large chopped potato
2 small onions chopped
1 1/2 cups carrots chopped
1 can diced tomatoes-juice included
2 ribs of celery chopped
1/2 can corn
1/2 can beans
1/2 can peas

I have the half cans left over from the childcare kids.  Any left over veggies, even if it’s a couple tablespoons worth, I throw them in a baggie and freeze them.  I pull it out and use it for soup or tator tot casserole.

I put the veggies in the pot then deboned and cut up meat and added that too.  I dug through the cupboard thinking I had barley but couldn’t find any so I found some small star noodles and added 1 cup of them.  I added water so it was just below the the “Max level” as seen in the picture below.   I set the Instant Pot for 6 minutes and did quick release.

I opened the pot and this is what I saw…oh my YUM!

I added salt and pepper to taste…The soup was wonderful.

Hubby is not a soup guy so to sneak it into meals, I make my soup really hearty.  He’ll tolerate stew so I make my soups with minimal liquid and maximum veggies, meats and noodles.

Of course I happened to pick the chipped bowl….oh well, I keep in real here…No special photo ops here!!

So that was our AMAZING Vegetable Beef soup.  YUM.  I’m so glad I made enough for leftovers.  I’m kind of known to do that…on Fridays I cook a little extra so on the weekend we can have leftovers for one of the meals…and as long as the leftovers are good, like this soup, no one minds leftovers!!