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Nutrition Snapshot
- About 27 grams of protein and 5 milligrams of iron in one adult bowl, from the beef, the beans, and the tomatoes together.
- The tomatoes are doing more than flavor. Their vitamin C helps the body absorb the iron in the beans and the beef.
- The trade-off: canned tomatoes and beans make this a moderately salty soup. The card shows the amount, and the notes show how to lower it.
Ground beef browned in the pressure cooker with onion and garlic, then canned tomatoes, low-sodium broth, a bag of frozen mixed vegetables, a can of kidney beans, oregano, and a bay leaf. Five minutes at high pressure, a handful of small pasta stirred in to cook in the hot soup, and dinner is on the table about 35 minutes after the beef hit the pot.
It is the soup most children already know, and it freezes well. A big pot is two dinners and a week of lunches.
Why This Soup Is Great for a Table With Toddlers and Teenagers
Iron is the nutrient children most often fall short on, and the shortfall shows up at two ages. Toddlers between one and three are growing fast and often drinking a lot of milk, which carries no iron and crowds out food that does.
Teenage girls need more iron than any other group at the table once their periods begin, and they are the group most likely to be eating less meat.
A soup carries iron to both of them without anyone noticing. The beef supplies heme iron, the form found in meat, which the body absorbs well on its own. The beans and the vegetables supply plant iron, which absorbs far better when a vitamin C food is eaten in the same meal. Here that food is the tomato base the whole soup sits in.
Why the Tomatoes Are Not Optional
Vitamin C roughly doubles the amount of plant iron the body takes up from a meal. The tomatoes put the vitamin C in the same spoonful as the beans. Milk with the meal works the other way for toddlers, so serve water at dinner and the milk at another time.
How much iron each age needs, and which other family dishes carry it, is in One Dish, Two Plates: Feeding Adults and Children From the Same Recipe.
One Pot, Two Plates
The adult bowl is the soup as written, with black pepper and a spoon of grated Parmesan. The toddler bowl is a ladle of the same soup with most of the broth left behind. That makes a spoonable pile of soft beef, beans, pasta, and vegetables that cools fast and does not slosh. Cut any large vegetable pieces in half.
A teenager’s bowl is the adult bowl, larger, with bread beside it. Nothing is cooked separately, and everyone eats the same food.
The Pressure Cooker Does the Waiting
A soup like this simmers for an hour on the stove to get the beans and vegetables soft and the flavors together. Under pressure it takes five minutes, plus about ten to come up to pressure and ten to release. A Dutch oven works too; simmer it covered for 45 minutes and add the pasta for the last ten.
Instant Pot Beef and Vegetable Soup
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Set the pressure cooker to sauté. Add the oil and the beef and brown, breaking it up, about 6 minutes. Add the onion and garlic and cook 2 minutes more. Spoon off any pooled fat.
- Add the tomatoes with their juice, the broth, frozen vegetables, beans, oregano, bay leaf, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and pepper. Stir and scrape the bottom so nothing sticks.
- Lock the lid, set the valve to sealing, and cook at high pressure for 5 minutes. Let the pressure release naturally for 10 minutes, then release the rest.
- Remove the lid and the bay leaf. Stir in the pasta, put the lid on loosely, and let the pasta cook in the hot soup on the keep-warm setting for 10 to 12 minutes, until tender.
- Taste and add salt if needed. Serve adult bowls with pepper and Parmesan; ladle toddler bowls with less broth and let them cool.
Nutrition
Notes
Tried this recipe?
Let us know how it was!Gluten Free
The pasta is the one ingredient with gluten. For a gluten-free soup, use a gluten-free small pasta or leave the pasta out and add a cup of cooked rice at the end. For people with celiac disease, also check the broth, the canned beans, and the canned tomatoes, since a few brands add wheat-based thickeners or barley-derived flavorings.
People who avoid gluten by preference can use any small pasta or a gluten-free one.
Go deeper
- One Dish, Two Plates: Feeding Adults and Children From the Same Recipe (food.nutriscape.net)
- School-Aged Kids (nutriscape.net)
- Protein & Amino Acids (supplement-sciences)
