I have been playing with pastrami lately! I am so happy they are making so many delicious meats uncured and without nitrites! All the flavor and none of the scary stuff. Trader Joes sells this and I keep buying it. I had a Rosemary Ham phase and now I am in the pastrami phase of experimentation. This soup turned out better than I expected! I need to remember how I did it. I had this bag of Spicy Brassica mix from the farmers market that I needed to use and I thought the pastrami in the soup would go well with the strong flavors. I didn’t take a lot of pictures at the beginning but this is what I did: I sautéed a large red onion, 3 really small sweet onions and 4 cloves of garlic sliced in 2 tablespoons of olive oil. When these started to caramelized I started throwing in everything. First was a big bag of the Spicy Brassica mix, bag of cauliflower florets, 3 large stalks of broccoli with the thick stem shaved with a potato peeler, package of butternut squash, bag of fresh English peas, 3 tomatoes chopped a handful of fresh oregano and thyme leaves, 3 little potatoes sliced, 6 cups of water and about 8 or 9 teaspoons of beef “better than bouillon” beef base (love this stuff) and 2 packages of chopped coarse Trader Joes uncured pastrami. Then I brought it to boil and set it on a low simmer all day.
Here is the soup much darker and richer than the first pictures before it has simmered all day. I have never used pastrami in a soup before but this was amazing! Loved it! Very rich with flavor and so healthy too!
btw- the grilled cheese is made of Tuscan Pane from Trader Joes and Italian Provolone, the real thing, that resembles nothing like the provolone I was familiar with. Great stuff! It is grilled in lots of butter. Kind of counter balances the healthy soup I guess. This was made for Henry, I am counting every calorie I am eating now so this grilled cheese would have broke the bank! I calculated the soup at 300 calories for about 2 and 1/2 cups! Awesome!