I love soup.

I get these days of “well, what do I have?” and then it goes from there to the soup pot. One of the most awesomest things about soup is that anything can go in it.

Several weeks ago someone gave me some meat that was never clearly identified. It’s clearly a chunk of beef, but from what part of the cow, I’m not certain. Knowing the people involved, I suspect it came from the shoulder.

I threw it in my freezing promising to use it someday. That was many weeks ago. Finally, I got sick of stumbling over that chunk while reaching for ice cream, and pulled it out.

I’m not that good at cooking with meat so I asked everyone I could think of about it. The suggestion I followed was a “cook it on low all day long”. The only problem with this is that we are approaching spring and really what I want to do is go outside and play all day long, and having a boiling pot making it hotter inside only amplifies this effect.

So I did that. After about an hour (much faster than I predicted!) it was soft enough to cut, so I pulled it out and chopped it into bite sized chunks (because I have this weird american habit of all food must be small enough to eat).

Back in the pot, threw in salt, cayenne, onions, scallions. I also threw in two huge sprigs of rosemary.  In a blender I pureed bell peppers, jalapeños, left over cabbage, and lemons. I didn’t tell anyone about these secret ingredients, and I wanted them out of the fridge before they tried to make friends with me. Tossed this “broth” into the soup, keep cooking.

I wanted this to be more like “stew” than “meat with water” so I looked for things that would thicken the broth. Since I always seem to have a large supply of lentils on hand, I dumped a bunch in. I also have barley! So this became lentil, barely, and beef stew.

I still have veggies left, noticeably, I saved a bell pepper, I have some celery, so I chopped these up, and in they went.

After last week I promised myself I wouldn’t put any cumin in it.

This was tasty! Actually, I would recommend something spicy added to it, and of course, I didn’t add enough salt. On the day I made it, I put out my collection of hot sauces, however most people didn’t use them. They did use the salt though. Since then, when I throw a bowl of it in the microwave, I usually put in sriracha, that garlic helps it a lot, and a lot of salt.

In the end, I suppose calling it “rosemary beef stew” would be a better name, but “mystery meat” is far more fun to have as a title.

Oh–and before I forget–on the side, we served a fabulous salami, cheese, and cracker plate on the side.

Also, despite the lack of pics today, I actually have been making pics. Pics will soon appear!