Hamburger Soup is a quick and easy meal loaded with vegetables, lean beef, diced tomatoes and potatoes. It’s great made ahead of time, budget friendly, reheats well and freezes perfectly.
We serve this easy Hamburger Soup with a fresh green salad and some crusty bread for the perfect meal!
I love a good soup as a weeknight meal. Hearty soups are satisfying & simple and they are loaded with vegetables and healthy ingredients! Soup is the perfect cool weather food or delicious weeknight dinner!
You can make them totally low cal like a Weight Loss Vegetable Soup, nice and hearty like a Chicken Wild Rice Soup or rich and creamy like a Slow Cooker Corn Chowder!
This Hamburger Soup is simple classic comfort food, hearty, healthy and satisfying. Perfect on a cool evening to warm your belly from the inside out.
I have to say that while we’ve always referred to this as hamburger soup, I know you guys have tons of other names for it! Hamburger soup, vegetable soup, hangover soup, poor man’s soup, bachelor’s stew… just to name a few.
Regardless of what you call it, you’ll definitely want to make it!
How to Make Hamburger Soup
A rich tomato broth is filled with ground beef, tender potatoes and vegetables. Sometimes the most simple ingredients make the best ever meals.
This hamburger soup is not only delicious, it’s easy to make with ingredients you likely have on hand.
I start with a mixture of lean beef, onion and garlic browned and drained. You can use any kind of ground meat in this recipe including ground turkey.
Beef broth is the best broth option to add lots of great flavor; I personally prefer the low sodium variety.
Hamburger Soup with Vegetables
I use a mixture of frozen vegetables to make this super easy (no chopping, no prepping) but it’s also a great way to use up any veggies in your fridge. Carrots, celery, peas, beans, zucchini… pretty much anything goes, sometimes we make this even with cabbage!
This version of Hamburger Soup uses potatoes since that’s how we always had it growing up. If you don’t have potatoes on hand (or just prefer pasta) you can add any type of pasta into this recipe!
I add an extra 1 cup of broth (or water) and let the pasta simmer until tender. Macaroni, shells and rotini are favorites to make this into a delicious and hearty macaroni beef soup!
What to Serve with Hamburger Soup
While the soup is simmering, I prepare a quick chopped salad and slice up a loaf of french bread (almost always served with Homemade Garlic Butter) for a complete meal.
If you’re lucky enough to have leftovers, this soup is great reheated for lunches all week but even better, it freezes perfectly!
I prop up a freezer bag in my little baggie holder and fill each baggie with one serving.
When I need a quick lunch, I take it out of the freezer the night before or in the morning and microwave for a perfect meal. (And then sometimes add a little sprinkle of cheese before serving).
This has been a family favorite forever!
It gets rave reviews from everyone who tries it, it’s quick and easy to make, reheats well and is versatile. The perfect soup.
This is also an excellent gifting soup.
If you know anyone that’s recently had a baby or surgery, or is just having an extra crazy week with the kids, this is the soup to drop off.
Add along a side of 30 Minute Dinner Rolls for the perfect meal!
It stretches to feed a crowd with that salad and bread and will last a few days.
Ingredients
- 1 pound lean ground beef
- 1 onion diced
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 2 medium potatoes peeled and diced
- 3 ½ cups beef broth
- 28 ounces canned diced tomatoes with juices, 1 can
- 10.75 ounces condensed tomato soup 1 can
- 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
- 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
- 1 bay leaf
- salt and black pepper to taste
- 3 cups frozen mixed vegetables or fresh chopped vegetables
Instructions
- Brown onion, ground beef and garlic until no pink remains. Drain any fat.
- Add potatoes, broth, tomatoes, tomato soup, Worcestershire sauce, seasoning and bay leaves. Simmer covered 10 minutes.
- Stir in vegetables. Simmer 15-20 minutes or until potatoes are tender.
Video
Nutrition Information
Nutrition information provided is an estimate and will vary based on cooking methods and brands of ingredients used.
Course Soup
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Made it in my slow cooker my dad use to love this back when him and my mom were married and I thought of him today your recipe tasted just like I remember thank you !
I am so glad you enjoyed this soup and warm memories Tabatha!
Amazingly simple and delicious soup! I even instacarted the ingredients and recipe to my sister who lives in another state so she could make it. Her usually picky eater kids LOVED it and so did her husband. This is such an adaptable wonderful recipe. And for me it only cost $13 using grassfed beef and all organic produce and canned goods. We had three meals out of it!
I am so glad you loved it Emilie! It’s definitely a budget friendly recipe. Enjoy!
This soup is amazing! I can eat it every day! It is my goto when I don’t feel like cooking and that is often
Thank you!
Thank you Charlotte, so glad you’ve loved it!
Followed the recipe exactly but used elbow macaroni instead of potatoes. This is so easy to make after work with minimal prep or mess! Served with salad and voila! Thanks for the recipe, this is going in my regular rotation!
Macaroni sounds like a delicious variation Debbie! I am glad you liked the recipe!
I made this recipe last night and it was a really big hit in my house..The steps were easy to follow.. All I suggest is if your going to use pasta instead of potatoes dont over do it with pasta it turns out like gulosh instead of soup..Tastes amazing!!
I am so glad you enjoyed the recipe and thank you for sharing your pasta advice Christy!
I loved this recipe but instead I used soy sauce instead of Worcestershire, and I used tomato sauce instead of soup, just because I like the tartness as opposed to the sweetness of the soup! I also added cabbage and it was delicious!
Sounds like some great substitutions Chondra! Thank you for sharing, and I’m so glad you enjoyed the soup.
I was anxious to try this recipe as it looks so good, but I just finished eating some and I am a little disappointed. I think it’s the tomato soup, and too much liquid. Maybe it will better after it sits in the refrigerator overnight. (I never understood why it is necessary to add SOUP to a SOUP recipe, but many recipes use canned soup. )
Sorry you were disappointed Vicki. You can certainly skip the tomato soup in this recipe if you’d like. We use it because it adds a bit of a sweetness and a touch of a creamy texture to the soup.
Absolutely delicious! Good enough for company. I sautéed the meat, onion, and garlic, then added everything to my slow cooker. Cooked on ‘high’ for a couple of hours, then ‘low’ for about 2 hours, although the time can be varied to your needs. Thank you so much for this recipe.
Thank you for sharing your tips for making this in the slow cooker Diane! Glad you enjoyed it!
Love your soup recipe!! I have made it several times. I was going to make it tonight but as I got started I realized I did not have everything I needed!! Because of the weather I have not been out to the store (the kids have missed 2 weeks of school! ). But because it is such a great recipe I was able to do that and still have a great soup for supper. Just added kidney beans, black beans, northern beans and tomato sauce instead of soup. But I will go back to the original recipe but I think I will keep on adding the extra beans. Thank you so much for sharing this with us.
You’re so welcome Mary. I love hearing how you made it your own with what you had on hand :)
you barely even said how to make this recipe. i was going to try it but you dont have the steps that literally every other recipe has in the whole entire world. EVERY RECIPE has steps. you used “beef broth is the best broth for everything” what in the world is that going to help with me making my pot of soup? next time think before you post such a stupid “recipe” if you call it that. i dont.
I’m sorry Bree but you must have missed the recipe. Feel free to use the “jump to recipe” button at the top of the page or scroll towards the bottom of the page and you’ll see the steps listed below the ingredients. Enjoy the soup. :)
It’s wonderful if you do follow recipe that is there, jump yo recipe
How rude! Didn’t your momma teach you anything? Troll!
This is so yummy. I used the instapot and it cooked so well. Full of flavor. Will save this recipe for later. Was perfect for a snow day.
So glad you loved it!
Love this soup and make it all the time! For the nutritional information, how much is one serving? Would you say 1 cup? Trying to count my calories
Each serving is about 1½ cups.
I am so happy to find this easy recipe! I followed the recipe closely, only deleting bay leaf (and I doubled it). It was just perfect for my lunch each day, and was a warm supper for my husband. I plan on making it again this weekend, making it a staple for my lunch. Thanks so much!
So glad you love this soup – it’s a favorite of ours too!
Making it now. Smells yummy
:)
My favorite soup ever! Great flavor and freezes perfectly. Thank you!! I’ve made this soup around a dozen times. Next time I might change it up and add barley instead of potatoes. Yum!
I bet barley would be great in this Robin! Thank you for sharing!
I substituted barley for the potatoes … we loved it!!
Great idea, thank you for sharing Susie!
I’d love to make this with ground chicken instead…. have you tried that? Also, what suggestions do you have to replace the condensed tomato soup? I’m trying to make it WW friendly and definitely don’t want to ditch the potatoes :P
Ground chicken would work great! You could try using vegetable juice (like V8) in place of tomato soup if you’d like.
I can’t wait to try your recipe! I do in fact, use V8 juice as my base when cooking vegetable soup! It is delicious in it.
Enjoy Angie!
I made this soup it was delicious but next time I would recommend boiling the potatoes a little before combining everything.
So glad you love the soup!
I just had surgery and found this recipe while feeling awful. It is the very best easiest soup i will be making over and over again. So delicious thank you!
So glad to help when you felt awful! Enjoy!
I made the dish last night and only made one tweek. Instead of using a can of condensed tomato soup, I used fresh tomato’s, blitzed them in the Ninja and added a bit of tomato paste to thicken. I rarely use anything from a tin. This dish was enjoyed by all. Cheers for the recipe.
Sounds great Chez! Glad you enjoyed it!
Fabulous! I have given this recipe to so many people….they loved it! I made this recipe “as is”, I always cut potatoes a bit smaller in all recipes. Thank you
Thank you for sharing the recipe Jan!
What are your recommsensations for making this in the slow cooker?
I would suggest browning the beef and adding it to the slow cooker along with the remaining ingredients. Cook on low 6-8 hours or until the potatoes are tender.
Now that sounds awesome! Slow cookers are the best to get the flavor for soups!
Great soup! I’m just amazed at how you have not lost your sh!t answering the same questions over and over. YES people you can leave out the condensed tomato soup, YES brown the beef before you throw everything in a crockpot, YES you can freeze up to 2-3 months. YES you can tweak ingredients to your liking. Holy cow people- read!