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
Cuisine American© SpendWithPennies.com. Content and photographs are copyright protected. Sharing of this recipe is both encouraged and appreciated. Copying and/or pasting full recipes to any social media is strictly prohibited. Please view my photo use policy here.
More Recipes You’ll Love
This was so good! I’m going to double it the next time.
My husband and I eat this soup regularly. I’m wanting to make a batch ahead of time to keep in the freezer for after I have my baby. Do you know about how long it will keep in the freezer before going bad?
Cooked ground beef should be good for about 2-3 months in the freezer.
I have made this recipe several times. When I made it the first time and told my husband we were having hamburger soup – he definitely was not excited about it. After a few bites, he changed his mind. This is delicious and so easy. The leftovers are even better. Don’t let just “hamburger soup” deter you. Great recipes. Thank you, Holly.
Excellent soup! My Dad made vegetable beef soup on a regular basis and our family loved it! This recipe was so easy and tasty and got great reviews from friends and family. Having it for lunch again today!
Hi Holly
I made your Hamburger Vegetable Soup today & we loved it! I normally use beef cubes but could not get any at the store so I used the Hamburger instead. I did add cabbage to the soup since I had some on hand. Love your recipes and look forward to them every day. Wishing you & your family a Happy Thanksgiving!
So glad you loved it! Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family too!
Looking forward to making many recipes. Have tried a few and they were great! Thank you.
This sounds like a soup my mom used to make, but she put biscuits on top and baked it. What do you think?
Great recipe!
Can you tell me what kind of potatoes work best with this soup as I’m worried about taking too long to soften, thanks!
Russet potatoes work well in this type of soup, if you would like them to cook faster try cutting them into a small dice. Hope this helps!
I use canned diced potatoes . They are already cooked. Just throw them in at the end to warm them up. They are always perfect.
What size of can soup
I use a 10.5oz can.
Can a person use v8 juice instead of broth
I have only tried this as written but I’d think you could substitute some of the broth for V8. If you substituted all of the broth it might be a bit too rich/thick.
I doubled the recipe but found it to be too tomato-ey. I’m not sure I would make this one again. I have made many of your recipes and I can say this is the first one I didn’t find delicious or just need to tweak to my tastes. When making a recipe the first time I usually make it as written and go from there.
Just an update since original post. I have now been making this for over a year pretty consistently. You cannot mess it up. I have used fresh, frozen and canned veggies . I now embellish the recipe by adding tons of veggies.I also add in Zing Zang non alcoholic Bloody Mary for extra flavor. This is 1 meal my husband always eats
When you click Print, only 6 ingredients come up on the list.
The remaining ingredients are to the right (it divides into two columns). Hope that helps.
Hi there! Wondering if there’s a way to make this without beef broth? I don’t have any on hand but have everything else for the soup! Could I use water and add something else for flavour? Thanks! Looking forward to it!
Do you have bouillon or another flavor of broth like chicken or vegetable?
Using water would lack flavor so you would need to add some salt and seasonings, perhaps a gravy packet or two (or au jus mix) if you have them or something with lots of flavor like a bit of soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce etc. Of course this will change the flavor of the soup and I haven’t tried it so I can’t say for sure.
Let us know how it goes!
This recipe was easy and very good Will make again
Can I use mini yellow potatoes in this soup?
That should work just fine Leslie!
Really enjoy this one. Popular around this house. Thanks
Have made this several occasions. I use one white potato & a sweet potato. Cooked each of them in micro for a minute.
Such a great soup
Quite tasty! It did seem to take a long time for the potatoes to get tender.