Steak Soup with fresh sage, rosemary & white sweet potato ribbons

This soup came about from needing to use up a steak that didn’t get cooked. I love a good ribeye steak, it just isn’t something I would make for myself. So when I defrosted a couple of steaks, and we didn’t end up eating them I decided to turn one of them into a teriyaki stir-fry. So I cut it up and tossed it with a bunch of chopped garlic and let it sit in the fridge and then that didn’t happen either. Then it finally went into this soup for breakfast. That is how most meals I create happen, needing to use something up. I hate wasting good food. I am glad for all the gears I kept having to switch into because I am making this soup again!

Start with a pound of fatty steak and cut it in fairly thin slices across the grain. Cutting meat against the grain is a very important step whether it be for prepping meat or cutting an already cooked steak or roast. Cutting it wrong is the difference between shredded beef or tender slices. Prep your onions and garlic by slicing half of a medium onion into slivers and set aside, and then chop three large cloves of garlic and also set aside. In a large soup pot heat up about a tablespoon of beef tallow and sear the steak slices in three batches as to not crowd the meat. When the meat doesn’t have room around each piece and is crowded it ends up boiling the meat instead of browning the meat. That browning gives the broth a lot of flavor.

Transfer each batch of meat out of the pot with a slotted spoon and into a glass plate. With each batch of meat let the oils in the pot get hot again before adding the next batch or meat. When the meat is all browned get the oil hot again and add in the onions. If there isn’t enough oil in the pot then add a little more tallow. Give the onions a little seasoning of salt and stir them around for a couple of minutes or so until they start to brown. Add in the chopped garlic to the onions and stir it in letting it cook for about a minute. Add back in all of the meat and stir everything together. Next add in 4-cups of chicken bone broth. You can use lamb or beef broth, but chicken was all that I had. I liked that the soup was lighter with the chicken broth, especially since it was my breakfast. Let the soup simmer on a low heat with a lid on for about an hour, or until the steak is almost tender.

Right before the meat is good and tender, get to peeling the white sweet potato. I don’t like prepping the sweet potato early because it sometimes oxidizes and gets brown spots, much like an apple does. I used a half of a medium white sweet potato. With a potato peeler run it back and forth over the sweet potato making ribbon-like “noodles”. and throw them into the soup pot with the rest. I added a lot of sage leaves from my garden as well, but other dried herbs would substitute in just fine. Cook the soup for about another twenty minutes with the lid off.

About the last five minutes until the soup is done I added in a big sprig of rosemary. Once I turned this soup off I put a lid on it and we all ate it at different times. It was good right away and got better with time too. What I like about using steak for a soup is that the meat cooks much quicker. A chuck roast needs time to break down it’s cartilage, but the payoff for that time spent is it makes it’s own bone broth. This soup is a great way to use up an overly fatty steak, as some of the fat breaks down and the rest is oh so good!