by Texas Homesteader ~

RancherMan & I were planning a day trip to visit my dad. When we go for a visit I like to take any meal-planning pressure off him. I’ll typically whip up something super easy & portable to bring with us so he doesn’t feel he needs to put on a spread for us.

On this day I decided a big pot of soup would fit the bill quite nicely.

We typically leave early in the morning so we can drive the 3 hours for our visit. We’ll stay all day and plan to be back home around 10 that evening.

Since I’ll be whipping up this soup early in the morning I need a lazy-cook’s recipe. You know, a recipe where I can just start with some cooked ground meat, open a bunch of cans, dump it all in a slow cooker’s crock and GO!

Enter this Lazy-Cook’s Italian Soup…

I’ve talked recently about making a soup using a similar lazy-cook’s method. ie: open-cans-dump-into-soup-pot.

I previously made Taco Soup and it was delicious. But dad really loves Italian-flavored food. So today I’ll use the same lazy-cook’s method, but with an Italian flair!

Easy Italian Soup Ingredients

I always have ground pork in the freezer due to RancherMan’s hunting talent with the oh-so-many wild hogs on our property.

I even usually have pre-cooked ground meat with sauteed onions & garlic already made and sectioned into 1.5 – 2 cup portions. So I brought a portion from the freezer and let it thaw in the refrigerator overnight.

Since my meat already contains the onions & garlic, I chop a rib of celery to cook along with the pasta. So I toss the chopped celery into the simmering water along with about 1/2 cup of elbow macaroni.

I allow it to simmer for 8-10 minutes & drain. Done & done! Now it’s time to assemble my soup.

Putting The Soup Together

I’ll be transporting my Italian soup to my dad’s house and then warming it in my slow cooker when I arrive. So the soup will all be assembled this morning in the slow-cooker’s removable crock.

I stir in my Italian seasoning & place the ground meat/onion mixture in my slow cooker. Then I add a can of drained & rinsed beans. I think any white bean will work here – navy, great northern, garbanzo, etc.

Finally I just toss in the other ingredients – an undrained can of mixed vegetables, some homemade chicken broth & a couple of undrained cans of Italian flavored chopped tomatoes. I add my cooked/drained noodles, give it a quick stir and I’m done!

Easy Transportation

To transport our soup we placed the removable crock of soup in our cooler along with some frozen water bottles to keep it all cold. We packed up the slow-cooker’s heating base to take with us too for easy heating.

I also made & packed the Homemade Cornbread dad loves (no jalapenos this time) and some delicious Apple Crumble for dessert.

When we arrive at dad’s house I’ll pull the removable crock from the cooler, place it in its base and turn it on low. That soup’s already cooked so this warming time just allows all the flavors to marry.

Then when it’s time to eat we simply ladle that hot soup into bowls and enjoy.

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