30-minute ground beef and cabbage soup

This healthy ground beef and cabbage soup is loaded with vegetables and is such a satisfying simple soup recipe that you’ll love and want to make again and again. Not only is it satisfying, spicy and flavorful, but making this simple low carb cabbage soup with ground beef will only take you around 30 minutes! It’s such a great healthy weeknight dinner idea that you can also have for lunch the next day and you’ll actually be looking forward to it!

We went a bit crazy on this one. It has like 4742724542 ingredients and they never knew they’re going to become amigas and rivales. But they did. And they taste great together. So, here’s the story. We went to the farmers market in early September, saw all of the produce and decided we want everything. In our mania, we were buying vegetables left and right. Laughing like some maniac going to space in 2021 and polluting the Earth for fun and money. As you can tell, someone’s been spending too much time on her phone reading news and becoming a real grown-up with a real hunchback on her neck. Is it a hunchneck then?

After the farmers market, which is one of the many exciting things we do offline, we got home. And we panicked.

What do we do with all this produce? Like do we freeze it? Do we can everything like our grandma and hope it doesn’t get moldy like our last attempts? That sauerkraut had a real kick to it…Do we ask a woodpecker to make some holes into a dead tree, so we can hoard some mushrooms in there? Like we've ever seen a woodpecker other than Woody. Did not know. Our fridge was full and our mind was cluttered.

We were holding those cabbage heads looking for answers and asking: do you spark joy and they were just sitting there doing nothing. No joy, no sparks. Thanks for nothing, Kondo.

We were craving soup. So we just decided to break all our rules of never, ever eating cabbage soup in our life and we made this monster. It’s a satisfying monster and totally worth all the panic and talking to cabbages.

Beef and Cabbage Soup Ingredients

Ground Beef. Use lean ground beef, or whatever minced meat you desire. Ground chicken or turkey will also do well here.

Cabbage. Yes, we did use purple and green cabbage for this soup. We hadn’t had cabbage in a while, so we were extremely excited it’s back and bought all the varieties. Which were the two: purple (or is it red?) and green. We did not want to make either cabbage head feel discriminated against so we chopped both of them for the soup. Of course, you can also make the soup with just one type of cabbage.

More Vegetables. Now, here you can simply use whatever vegetables you want and have. We used almost everything we had at home: peppers, carrots, scallions, onions, even mushrooms. Surprisingly, they actually tasted good together.

Herbs and Spices. Coriander, cumin, mint, crushed red pepper and turmeric were some of the dried herbs and spices we added to this soup. We also added a handful of chopped fresh herbs like basil, mind and parsley. Again, here you can add whatever herbs and spices you desire!

Salt and water or stock of choice to make it a soup.

How it comes together

The first thing we’re doing here is cooking the meat with some olive oil, herbs, spices and some salt directly in the cooking pot. Stir it for a bit and break into chunks.

During that time, chop your cabbage, mushrooms and herbs, then grate the pepper, ginger and carrots.

Then add the cabbage, stir for a few minutes until the cabbage softens and loses some of its volume…Definitely didn’t do it, just so that we can fit in more ingredients into the cooking pot.

Then it’s time to add in the vegetables you grated – that’s the red pepper, carrot and ginger. Pour in the water to cover, then add a generous pinch of salt and cover the pot with a lid to bring it all to a boil. Alternatively, instead of water and salt, you can use stock of choice.

Once the soup is boiling, reduce the heat and let it cook for about 8-10 minutes to allow all the flavors to come together.

Add in the mushrooms, scallions and the chopped fresh herbs, add salt to taste if needed and cook for last 2-3 minutes.

Serve with some sliced red pepper, chili pepper or jalapeno for some additional heat and some chopped green herbs like parsley for some freshness.

We hope you enjoy this satisfying soup with cabbage and ground beef! Let us know if you have any feedback or questions!

We recommend experimenting with the recipe. Maybe even trying it with tofu for a satisfying plant-based version and adjusting the herbs and spices to what you like. Make it your own!