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Crock Pot Hamburger Soup-with Instant Pot Instructions

Hamburger soup is one of my ‘GO TO’ weekly budget meal planning dinners.  This dinner recipe is healthy, gluten free and versatile. It uses what you have on hand.

Crockpot Hamburger soup has low net carbs. A healthy, delicious high fiber meal NOW with Instant Pot instructions. Serve this slow cook recipe with a pan of Mexican cornbread for an easy dinner. The leftovers are great too!

Crock Pot Hamburger Soup

Crock Pot Hamburger Soup

Our Crock pot and Instant Pot recipes section is full of delicious recipes that work well for budget meal planning.

When it’s raining, cold and blowing, the crock pot is usually perking along on my counter. My oven is in high gear too baking various breads and goodies for Dave.  Some variation of  this Hamburger Soup recipe is often in the pot.

Taco Soup is a fun variation of Hamburger soup.

WATCH ME MAKE THIS SOUP WITH TIPS AND IDEAS:

I do a LOT of simple, nourishing cheap meals. We have always lived on a tight budget. Raising five kids on a single income with a large property and an old house…yeah. The dollars always went somewhere other than the food bill. So budget friendly meals are a way of life for me. Hamburger soup in all it variations is a hallmark healthy meal on a budget. And it’s SO good.

ONE large pot of hamburger soup will last several days. That stretches out the cost of your ingredients. And gives you soup for lunch and dinner for several days. I LOVE this soup leftover. It gets better and better flavor over time.

My family always looks forward to dinner.  It’s been a favorite for decades at our house. It’s easily made in the slow cooker, instant pot or stock pot.

Crock Pot Hamburger Soup

Crock Pot Hamburger Soup

Clean out your fridge produce bin to make Hamburger soup recipes:

I use whatever vegetables I have in my fridge that taste good together when I make this soup. I try to find seasonally available fresh, organic produce in Farmers Markets, stores, and our garden.  Fresh local produce offers the best nutrition.

USE YOUR LEFTOVERS and dig around in your pantry staples for this recipe! 

Did you know vegetables respire? And as they do they lose nutrients. Freshest is best with veggies! So don’t let your veggies waste away in your fridge. Use them up in this wonderful hamburger soup recipe. 

Your soup will taste fantastic and offer you the best the season has to offer if you follow my suggestions in the video for building a flavorful soup base. You can use whatever beans you have in the cupboard but we like kidney beans best.

A Garden Harvest In October 2016

A Garden harvest in October

You CAN add noodles to this recipe to make it heartier.

  1. AFTER the soup is completely assembled Just add I cup of elbow, bowtie, rotini, spiral or other fairly thick noodle (stay away from thin or long noodles) to the pot.
  2. Now add two cups of broth.
  3. Stir and cook. 

FOR THE SLOW COOKING METHOD:

Add in noodles in the last 30 to 60 minutes

FOR THE SOUP FUNCTION METHOD:

Add the noodles before you lock the lid and press soup. Cook as directed

Crock Pot Hamburger Soup Ingredients

These are the canned and bottled ingredients I usually add into hamburger soup. Mostly organic. Tomatoes go in canned when I’m out of garden tomatoes or I use my frozen tomatoes.

Ground beef soup recipes improve in both flavor and nutrition when you choose excellent ingredients like a grass fed low fat beef. A full fat beef will need to be cooked and drained. I don’t like to drain my beef once it’s cooked with all the seasonings in it because a good amount of flavor is also drained away.

I never drain grass fed organic hamburger  since it has almost no saturated fat. So ALL the flavor stays in the meat.

If you keep your eyes peeled you can often find lean grass fed hamburger in the discounted manager special bin at the grocery store. If I’m not at Costco I look for deals in the groceries and often find them.

A note on canned goods and sodium.

Most canned goods are loaded with extra salt we don’t need. So are the seasonings. My recommendation is to buy your canned goods low or no salt. That way you can season this soup and not worry you are overloading it with sodium.

Homegrown Carrots And Herbs

Homegrown carrots and herbs

Easy, flavorful and nourishing; it doesn’t get much better than that.

Dried beans work as well in this or many other recipes. It takes forethought to soak the beans and boil them. You can cook dried beans fast in your instant pot like I did in this recipe.

If you don’t want to use dried beans no worries. Organic, low salt, Canned beans are wonderfully healthy for you. Especially if you put in the bean juice too. Which I always do.

Crock Pot Hamburger Soup

Crock Pot Hamburger Soup


Crock Pot Hamburger Soup:

This soup can use any vegetables you enjoy that won’t break down into mush. That’s why I don’t regularly use potatoes in this recipe. The ingredients I ALWAYS use are hamburger, beans and tomatoes in some form. Carrots and parsnips…kohlrabi. Whatever your favorite hard veggies are will work in this soup.  I ALWAYS use the Worcestershire sauce and beef Bouillon to give it the characteristic flavor our family enjoys.

Hamburger Soup Instant Pot Method Choices:

Making soup in the modern electric pressure cooker is SO easy. Hamburger soup is one of our simplest recipes. 

  • This recipe works great in the Instant Pot on slow cooker function with this nifty glass lid.
  • If you want to speed the process up, Make Hamburger soup on the soup function (ready in under an hour).
  • I have included the instant pot instructions for you in the recipe card.

I love slow cooking. Fortunately, The Instant pot and glass lid combo replaces my crock pot (One pot and SO many functions!). The instant pot has a stainless, unbreakable cooking pot and sautes right in the pot. The instant pot has the slow cooker function AND also pressure cooks to speed up the cook time if you get home early and don’t want to wait. 

For more delicious, easy Instant pot recipes on Homemade Food Junkie go here.

Suggestions To make this healthy hamburger vegetable soup recipe into a yummy pressure cooker beef stew:

We love this recipe as a soup. BUT to make it into a hearty beef stew here are a few ideas to get you started.

To make Hamburger soup into a hamburger stew I suggest you start by cooking your beans in DRIED form in the instant pot  on high pressure for 25 minutes. I use this method with my instant pot four bean stew. Go to that post for ideas and proportions of the liquids to beans if you go this route.

After your beans are cooked remove them to a bowl and saute the hamburger as directed in your recipe card.

To thicken your ground beef stew (IF you feel like it)

  1. Start with 1 Tablespoon cornstarch(or your favorite thickening substitute) mixed with 2 Tablespoons water and mix it together to make a rue.
  2. Add the mixture to the BUBBLING soup and let it cook on slow cook for 30 minutes OR set the instant pot to sautè function after the soup is finished.
  3. When the finished soup is bubbling add the thickener and stir it as it bubbles along. The soup will turn thicker and the broth should stay clear once the cornstarch is thoroughly cooked.

The leftovers are delicious! After the flavors blend together this soup improves.

SERVING SUGGESTION:

Make bread bowls to serve this soup and have dinner and your bread in a cheap healthy meal.

Bread Bowl With Hamburger Soup

Your Printable Recipe Card:

 
Crock Pot Hamburger Soup
Yield: 10 servings

Crock Pot Hamburger Soup with Instant Pot Instructions

Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 2 hours
Total Time: 2 hours 20 minutes

This healthy, versatile Crock pot Hamburger soup is one of my favorite ways to use up leftovers. A healthy delicious high fiber, gluten free meal with low net carbs. NOW with Instant Pot instructions.

Ingredients

  • 1 lb. hamburger
  • 1 14 oz. can red kidney beans
  • 1 14 oz. can garbanzo beans
  • 1 14 oz. can tomato sauce
  • 1 14 oz. can stewed tomatoes
  • 1/4 small can sliced jalapeno peppers OR 1 fresh diced jalapeno with no seeds
  • 1/2 chopped sweet bell pepper-any color
  • 2 or 3 ribs celery chopped small
  • 2 large carrots sliced or chopped small
  • several garlic chives chopped all the way up the green
  • several green onions chopped
  • 1/2 inch piece of ginger minced
  • 2 tsp turmeric
  • 1 tablespoon beef bouillon paste to taste
  • 1 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce to taste
  • water to desired consistency

Instructions

CROCK POT/SLOW COOKER INSTRUCTIONS:

  1. Brown the hamburger in a large skillet with the onions and garlic chives.
  2. Put hamburger mixture and all the other ingredients into a large crock pot and set on high for four hours.
  3. If you need more time before serving, set it to low for 6 to 8 hours. Enjoy!

INSTANT POT INSTRUCTIONS:

  1. Press the saute function.
  2. Place hamburger into the pot(add oil if needed for lean hamburger) and break hamburger apart until it begins to brown.
  3. Add the onions and garlic. Cover and saute until the meat is thoroughly browned and the onion is translucent (about 3 minutes).
  4. Set the instant Pot to slow cook function. Press the Adjust key to move the heat up to MORE. 
  5. Add remaining ingredients.
  6. Cover with the glass lid (If you have it) and set the instant pot timer from four hours up to 6 or 8 hours. The Instant Pot will automatically keep warm until you serve it.
  7. OR for a faster meal use the SOUP function for 30 minutes after you finish sautèing the hamburger, onions and garlic.

Notes

I HAVE noticed that the slow cook function (even on high heat) does NOT heat up as much as my old crock pot did. This is great for retaining nutrients. But the hard veggies, like carrots may not soften as much as you like. So ALWAYS slow cook on high heat (the MORE button).

OR Put the soup under pressure(with the locking pressure lid) on manual heat for 5 minutes to fully cook any veggies that are not as tender as you like.

At any time you can hurry up your dinner by using the manual or soup function to complete the cooking.

Do you prefer to cook this recipe using the soup function only? Press the soup function key after the soup is assembled and seal the locking pressure lid. The default time on the soup function is 30 minutes. The pot will take time to pressurize(10 minutes or so). After the pot is done quick release OR let the pot Natural release. It will automatically go to the warming function and remain ready to serve until you need it.

To make this healthy soup a beef stew, just add thickener!

  1. Start with 1 Tablespoon cornstarch(or your favorite thickening substitute) mixed with 2 Tablespoons water and mix it together to make a rue.
  2. Add the mixture to the BUBBLING soup and let it cook on slow cook for 30 minutes OR set the instant pot to sautè function after the soup is finished.
  3. When the finished soup is bubbling add the thickener and stir it as it bubbles along. The soup will turn thicker and the broth should stay clear once the cornstarch is thoroughly cooked.

Nutrition Information

Yield

10

Serving Size

1 1/2 Cup

Amount Per Serving Calories 287Total Fat 10gSaturated Fat 3gTrans Fat 0gUnsaturated Fat 5gCholesterol 36mgSodium 741mgCarbohydrates 34gFiber 7gSugar 6gProtein 17g

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