Crockpot Caramelized Onion & Beef Soup (Pot Roast Soup)

This soup takes time, but all you really need to do is some slicing and dicing—the slow cooker does the rest. You don't even have to peel the potatoes! Because it cooks for so long, you end up with a fantastically flavorful soup. It has all the flavors of a great pot roast, but without the work of making a gravy. 

It's a great dish to make and freeze during your pregnancy because it's a very nutritious postpartum meal. After the blood loss of childbirth, it's crucial to eat iron-rich foods, like beef. The Vitamin C in the soup's vegetables will actually help your body absorb that iron, as well as promote wound healing.

Ingredients
serves 6 to 8

• 4 large onions, quartered and sliced
• 3 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 to 1 1/2 lbs. beef stew meat, cut into bite-sized pieces (I use my kitchen shears)
• 2 cups diced thin-skinned potatoes (about 5 or 6 medium)
• 2 or 3 large carrots, diced
• 8 cups beef broth (homemade or a low-sodium boxed version)
• 1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 Tablespoon prepared horseradish
• salt and pepper, to taste

At night: Before you go to bed, prepare your onions for caramelizing, just as we do in my Foolproof Caramelized Onions. Grease your Crockpot with some extra virgin olive oil, then dump in all of your sliced onions. Pour the rest of the oil on top and toss onions until they are coated. Set on low and cook for eight to 10 hours—they cook while you sleep! 

In the morning: Place the rest of the ingredients into the slow cooker and give it all a big stir. Set the Crockpot on low and cook for another six to eight hours. When you get home at the end of the day, dinner will be ready and waiting (and delicious!). 

If you'd like, you can chill the whole pot and allow the fat to solidify. Using a large spoon, lift the hardened fat off of the soup. 

Serve with a side salad and some crusty bread and you'll have a wonderfully satisfying and comforting meal. Remember that old ad about Chunky soup: the soup that eats like a meal? Yeah, that's totally what this soup is.

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