Vegetable beef soup

Ingredients

For the Meat :

• 1 1/2 pounds beef stew meat, sprinkled - generously with paprika
• a little vegetable oil, for browning the meat
• 2-4 cups water
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoonblack pepper
• 1-2 teaspoon beef bouillon granules, optional

For the Soup :

• 2 (14-ounces) cans Swanson Beef Broth
• 1 1/2 additional cups water
• 3-4 potatoes, cut into chunks (you can leave the skins on if you'd like)
• 3/4 cup onion, chpd
• 3/4 cup peeled carrots, cut into small chunks
• 1 small green bell pepper, membrane and seeds removed, and cut into fourths
• 2 cans (14 1/2 - ounces each) diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1 (8-oz) tomato sauce
• dried thyme leaves, to taste
• dried oregano leaves, to taste
• dried basil leaves, to taste
• additional salt and pepper, if needed
• 3/4 cup frozen green beans
• 3/4 cup frozen peas
• 3/4 cup frozen corn

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Preparation

• For the Stove-Top :
  Trim the meat of fat, and cut into even sized chunks. Sprinkle generously with paprika. Brown in batches, in a hot skillet in a little oil. Don't brown all of the meat all at once, or it will just steam it, and you won't get a nicely browned crust.
• Once all the meat is browned, place in a large skillet with a cover and add about 2-4 cups of water, about 1 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon black pepper.
• You can add about 1 -2 tsp beef bouillon granules, if desired. Bring to a boil and then simmer, covered, for about 1 1/2 hours, or until tender.
  After the meat is tender, you set it aside in the broth and add it all back to the soup at the very end.
• In another large soup pot, combine the beef broth, the additional water, potatoes, onion, carrots, green bell pepper, tomatoes, tomato sauce, thyme leaves, oregano leaves and basil leaves.
• Bring to a boil, and cook for about 20 minutes. Add the frozen vegetables, and cook for another 20 minutes, or until all the vegetables are tender.
• Remove the green pepper and add the meat with its broth. Cook a few more minutes, until the meat is heated through.
• For the Crock Pot :
  Add all of the ingredients (except for the frozen vegetables), in a 6-quart crock pot, reducing the amount of water to just 1 1/2 cups.
• You do not need to brown the meat first, but you certainly can if you wish to. Cover and cook on LOW for 8-9 hours, or on HIGH for 4-5 hours.
• About 30 minutes before the end of cooking time, cook all of the frozen vegetables on top of the stove, according to package directions, until tender, then add them to the crock pot.
• The original recipe calls for adding the frozen vegetables at the very beginning, but every time you've made this in the crock pot, they never seem to get tender enough.
• You might even find that the same thing happens to the carrots, so you might want to precook those too and just add at the very end.
• You will find that you really do need a large crock pot, as this makes a lot of soup.