The recipe

Italian Venison Vegetable Soup

The soup below really starts as just your basic meat and vegetable soup...I make 8 quarts at a time as there are a lot of us and I want it to go extra meals.

First slowly brown the meat, in this case venison, with garlic and onion...to your taste. I use two cloves and one small respectively. I substitute stew beef, ground beef, or regular or Italian sausage or any combination thereof for the venison in this brew. We just happen to be out of all those things right now and down to eating deer or buying meat.


When the meat is well cooked, I add such vegetables as are available..canned, frozen or right out of the garden. This particular batch contained carrots, green beans, lots of cut up grape tomatoes, and yellow and green zucchini, all from the garden plus some frozen cauliflower and broccoli.Also a large can of corn and a can of garbanzo beans.


I usually add a couple of the large cans of crushed tomatoes and as many cans of water as it takes to fill up the pot.

For seasoning...well it varies. This time I added garlic and onion as listed above, commercially prepared Italian seasoning, fresh parsley (but frozen or dried is fine), a dash of Mrs. Dash, a couple leaves of lovage, (but if you have celery, that is better) and half a leaf of sweet basil. I also often include spearmint leaves and orange mint leaves, but mine are all buggy right now. If is a little too tangy a teaspoon of sugar is a good addition. So is thyme if you have time, which I didn't this time, although there is plenty of it out in the herb garden.


When everything is boiling nicely I toss in some pasta. We are fond of weird pasta...strange shapes and colors seem to taste better. Or rice...brown, white, wild or all of them. (you could put potatoes in the vegetable section as well).


In order to call it Italian soup, this time I dumped in about a quarter cup of grated Parmesan cheese, which adds a nice flavor and texture.


Then I set my oven to between 285 and 325 and go to work....temperature depends on how long I am going to be gone. If you can't watch soup or stew it will cook itself very nicely in the oven. (I have yet to meet an 8-quart slow cooker I'm afraid.) Anyhow when I am done milking cows the soup is done becoming dinner.


I really like this recipe because it is very forgiving. You can put darned near anything in it...and I do.