I can’t recall exactly why now, but a couple months ago, I was googling Chop Suey. What I discovered was that Chop Suey is in fact, not Chinese food at all (kind of a no brainer since they don’t eat most of the things we call Chinese food in China) but is a wholly American dish of questionable origins. But that’s okay because this questionable AmericanChinese dish is one of my absolute favorites from when I was growing up. I just finally made it myself for the first time.

This makes a HUGE amount of food. Growing up, there were four of us, including my dad and my brother who can put away astonishing amounts of chop suey, and there was always plenty left over to eat on for the next several days. I should have taken this into account when cooking for myself because I ate chop suey until I was sick to death of it, and probably barely made it halfway through this batch. So if you make it exactly as written, be prepared for a lot of food. If I make it again for just me, I’ll probably use one can of vegetables and go from there.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Chop Suey meat, 3 cans of chop suey vegetables, 1 can of sliced water chestnuts, can of mushrooms, bead molasses, soy sauce, flour, milk, rice and a little bit of oil. Also optional, chow mein noodles.

To begin with, put a little bit of whatever oil you’re using in the bottom of a large stock pot. You can use whatever you’d like. I used olive oil, the original “recipe” called for shortening.

Roll your chop suey meat in flour. I have two notes about the meat:
1) We have a supermarket locally that actually sells a package labeled Chop Suey Meat. If yours doesn’t, go for pork for stir fry. My dad has also made this with a combination of beef and pork and that’s turned out well.
2) When I bought the meat, I thought one package looked too small, and bought two packages. When I went to actually make this, I second guessed myself and only used one of them. I should have stuck with my first instincts– I would have been much happier if there had been more pork in my chop suey.

Okay, moving on.

Imagine a picture of me putting the flour coated pork into the pan with the oil, and cooking until the meat is browned. I forgot to take a picture of that step. When that’s done…

Open your chop suey vegetables and pour one can into the pan.

Followed by a second can…

… and a third.

There’s already water chestnuts in the chop suey vegetables, but we really like them so we add an additional can of them. Feel free to leave them out if water chestnuts aren’t exactly your cup of tea. Otherwise, go ahead and dump those on top.

Then add in a can of mushrooms.

And shake in some soy sauce. I don’t have an amount here. My mother is the queen of refusing to give me measurements. I know, I hate it too. She did caution me against adding too much soy sauce at this point, so just shake a little in, you’ll supplement your plate with more soy sauce later so no harm if you don’t get a lot in now.

Next, you’re going to add your bead molasses. The recipe calls for 2 tablespoons. My mom said that she usually just pours enough in to fill her wooden spoon, and then stirs it in. So that’s what I did… obviously that’s much easier than trying to measure out something with molasses in the name into a measuring spoon and then trying to get it back out and into your dish. No thanks.

Give it all a good stir, and then let the whole thing simmer on the stove for several hours, stirring occasionally. That part’s not in the original recipe, but I can’t leave anything alone, so I do a lot of stirring.

This is what mine looked like after it cooked for a few hours. It’s looking good already, but before you serve the chop suey it still needs to be thickened. I don’t have one of those highfalutin’ fancy shakers, so I improvise with an empty peanut butter jar.

Put some flour in the jar… I think I used 1/2 cup of a gluten free flour.

Add in milk, but leave enough room in the jar for things to mix around once you put the lid on!

Then shake for all you’re worth! And kindly ignore how badly I am in need of a manicure. Unless you’d like to buy me one because I hate to admit it, but my poor cuticles look much worse than that now! This weather is killing me!

Anyways, when you’re done shaking up your flour and milk mixture and you have it as combined as you can get it, and you’re done admiring your manicure, go ahead and pour it into your pot.

Give it a good stir, and this part of the meal is done!! You’ll still need to make some rice. I used minute rice, cooked it in the microwave according to the package directions.

So put some rice on your plate.

Spoon some of the chop suey mixture on top. This is the last picture that I took, but I also put more soy sauce on top of my plate. Normally I’d also serve this with a handful of chow mein noodles, but I was trying to make this dish gluten free, and chow mein noodles are certainly NOT gluten free! I didn’t miss them as much as I thought I would though!

Chop Suey

Chop Suey Meat
3 cans of chop suey vegetables
1 can mushrooms
1 can sliced water chesnuts
2 T. bead molasses
Soy Sauce

Roll chop suey meat in flour and brown in shortening. Add remaining ingredients. Simmer for several hours. Before serving, add milk and flour mixture (1/2 – 3/4 cup flour w/ milk in shaker). Serve with rice and chow mein noodles.

Sometime before Christmas, I decided to take advantage of all the sales out there and buy myself a crock pot. Technically a slow cooker, since mine was not made by Rival, but you know what I mean. I immediately had to find a bunch of recipes to try out, and this is the first of them. Expect plenty more crock pot recipes coming up in the relatively near future. I love tacos, taco salads, nachos, that sort of thing, so Taco Soup jumped right out at me.

I found this recipe at Slow and Simple. I thought it sounded promising, but there are a lot of taco soup recipes available out there and I have to say this one is not going to be my favorite. Part of that could be my fault as I think I added too much water, but even though this was good, it just didn’t have quite what I was looking for. That’s why it’s Taco Soup, Take One. I fully intend to try a different recipe soon! But let’s get started with this one, maybe you’ll like it better than I did.

You’ll need 1 lb ground beef, 2 pkg taco seasoning mix, 1 can corn, 1 can black beans, 1 can tomatoes with green chiles, 1 onion, 1 green pepper (The original recipe also called for black olives, which I don’t like, and tomatillos as an optional ingredient. I left both out.) Don’t worry, my meat’s not bad, it’s just still frozen.

Gratuitous picture just to show off my new crockpot. Woohoo!

Brown and drain your ground beef on the stove top, then add it to the bottom of your crock pot.

Add in your two packets of taco seasoning mix. I kind of stirred it in before moving on to the next step, but I don’t think that’s a requirement.

Throw in your chopped green pepper…

And your chopped up onion.

Followed by the 16 oz can of tomatoes with green chiles, undrained. (Sidenote- this may have also contributed to why I wasn’t thrilled with this soup. I got the hot can of tomatoes, but I don’t like spicy AT ALL. It was too much for me, I may have liked this better with a milder can of tomatoes.)

Add your can of black beans, undrained. This is where I started to worry about this recipe… have you SEEN what canned beans are floating in?? Still, I poured it into the crock pot.

Finally, add the can of whole kernel corn, also undrained.

I gave it a quick stir to make sure all the goodies were distributed.

Then I added two cans of water to fill the crock pot. If I were going to make this soup again, I’d cut it back to one can of water, and just keep an eye on it. I felt like this soup was not thick enough, and this is probably why.

Cover the crock pot, and cook on low for 5 or more hours.

This is what the final product looked like, dished up into a bowl.

I added a handful of cheese and sour cream to the bowl. Not pictured, the handful of Fritos I also added to help “thicken” it up.

If you make this, let me know how it turns out. I wasn’t impressed, but maybe it will float your boat!

1 lb lean ground beef, browned and drained
2 pkg. taco seasoning mix
1 16 oz can tomatoes with green chilies, undrained.
1 16 oz can black beans, undrained.
1 16 oz can corn, undrained
1 can black olives, chopped or sliced
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 bell pepper, chopped
4 tomatillos, chopped (optional)

Place everything in a large crockpot, add water, if necessary to fill. Cook on low for 5 or more hours until flavors are blended. Top each bowl with a handful of shredded cheddar cheese. Serve with sour cream, taco chips, and salsa on the side.

I made this soup about a week and a half ago, and ever since my best friend has been patiently waiting for me to put this recipe up so she can make it for her husband. I’ve tried a couple of times, but each time I was either having problems with the pictures, or with my blog, but today I think it’s going to work!

Let me preface this recipe by saying that when I was reading the list of ingredients, I was not overly impressed, and probably would have just kept right on going. However, my mom had already made it to rave reviews, and it looked simple enough so I decided to try it. It was SO good, and I even thought the soup was better when I packed it in my lunch a couple of days the next week. So, without further ado, I give you Pizza Soup. ((My mom found the recipe online… I can’t find it now, but if I can locate it later, I’ll link it up. Give credit where credit is due, after all!))

The Ingredients: 1 onion, 1 green pepper, 8 oz. mushrooms, 2 cloves garlic, 1 lb. ground beef, 14.5 oz. can petite diced tomatoes, 12 oz. tomato paste, two 14.5 oz. cans chicken broth, Italian seasoning, 3 oz. sliced pepperoni and mozzarella cheese.

First up, ground beef in a large stock pot over medium-high heat. The original recipe called for lean ground beef, but I had 83/17, so that’s what I used.

Next I diced up my green pepper (discard the seeds)

and added that to my pot with the ground beef.

Then I cried. I mean, I diced up some onion. This is a little less than half of the onion pictured with the ingredients, just for reference. Add more onion if you like, but I’m not really an onion person, so it should be impressive I added them at all.

Add the diced onions to the ground beef and green peppers already in the pot.

Then throw in 2 cloves of minced garlic. This is one teaspoon if you’re using the pre-minced stuff like I am. If you’re using fresh sliced mushrooms, you’ll want to add them at this point. Otherwise, saute these ingredients over medium high heat until the ground beef is browned and the veggies are tender. Since I did not use lean ground beef, I also had to drain some grease off at this point.

So now I have less-greasy ground beef, veggies and garlic.

I used canned mushrooms, so I drained them and added them to the pot at this point. Remember, if you were using fresh mushrooms, you’ve cooked them with your meat already.

Add your 14.5 oz can of petite diced tomatoes.

And 12 oz. of tomato paste. A little trick here, and I’d have taken pictures if I’d had enough hands, but an easy way to get tomato paste out of the can is to use the can opener to remove BOTH ends. Then you simply remove one end, and push the other end THROUGH the can to the other side. It will remove all of the tomato paste with it. MUCH easier than trying to scrape it out of the teeny can with a spoon.

Pour in two 14.5 oz cans of chicken broth. No tricks required here, these cans had tabs on the top like pop cans– wonderful!

Add two tablespoons Italian seasoning.

Finally, add 3 oz. of sliced pepperoni. The original recipe called for turkey pepperoni, I used regular. I also thought whole pepperonis might be too big, so I sliced them in half.

Stir well to combine all the ingredients. Bring to a boil, then reduce to low and let simmer for 20 minutes.

This is what it looked like after cooking down for 20 minutes. It smelled WONDERFUL at this point too… this is about when Sarah arrived, and she said she thought I must have been cooking something fantastic in the crock pot.

So I dished some into a bowl

and topped it with some mozzarella cheese. Yummy! And like I mentioned before, this soup kept very well in the fridge. I cooked it on Sunday and when I took it to work a couple of days last week, I thought it tasted better than it had the first day. I put a portion in a container in the freezer, so one day soon I’ll have to get it out and see how it held up.

Pizza Soup

1 onion, diced
1 green pepper, diced
8 oz. mushrooms
2 cloves minced garlic
1 lb. ground beef
14.5 oz can petite diced tomatoes, undrained
12 oz can tomato paste
2 14.5 oz cans chicken broth
2 Tbs. Italian seasoning
3 oz. pepperoni slices
mozzarella cheese

Saute first five ingredients (through ground beef) in large stockpot over med-high heat until beef is cooked and veggies are tender. Add all other ingredients and stir well. Bring to a boil over medium heat then reduce to low and simmer for 20 minutes. Top each serving with cheese.