There are just some foods that we begin to crave as Autumn approaches.  Here are some of our family’s favorite hearty fall recipes.

5 Awesome Fall Recipes Perfect For This Wonderful Season. 

#1    Vegetable Beef Soup

Don’t you love vegetables?  Beef and Vegetable soup has always been a favorite of mine.  Dave isn’t such a big fan of vegetable soup for whatever reason, but Will, my most finicky eater of all, loves this soup!

   Years ago, when I first made this soup, he told me he liked it.  Whoa!  Not long after that, he requested ‘that soup with the green beans in it’.

   I like the fact that the beef and vegetable pieces are larger than the pieces in the canned soup and you can’t even begin to compare the flavor!  

#2 Homemade Chili

   Growing up we always made chili, but my mother added elbow macaroni to it.  I am sure that was a way of making the pot of chili last longer and go farther with my three brothers and a sister.   I always hated leftovers the next day.  The macaroni expanded and was not appetizing to me at all!  Yuck! 

   So when I left home and began cooking for my family, we completely eliminated the macaroni.  I love this chili.  I brown the meat, leaving sizable pieces of hamburger, and it seems to me, it is a little heartier chili, because of that.

   Kidney beans were in my mother’s original recipe, too.  I do not like the hard shells on kidney beans in chili.  I eliminated them and now use a can of spicy chili beans instead.  We always drained the kidney beans, but I now use the entire can of chili beans.  There is extra flavor in the sauce.

   When we moved to Kentucky, I found ‘Buena Vida Chili Powder’ and have been using it for many, many years.  It comes in a packet weighing .63 ounces and has chili pepper, paprika, salt, garlic powder, and red pepper in it.  It seems like a good combination of spices for the chili.  It’s a little more complex than the plain old chili powder we used when I was growing up at home.  ►Chili recipe.

#3 Potato Soup

   Big chunks of potatoes, carrots, and slices of celery are abundant in this creamy, delicious Potato Soup.   I always leave the skins on the Yukon gold potatoes because it adds a rustic look to the soup.  The onions are softened in butter.  Flour, salt. and pepper added to the onions and butter create a roux.  The liquids are added and the result is a thick creamy soup.

#4 Beef Stew

    When I was in high school, a long time ago, I found this recipe for stew in a teen magazine.  It was actually for lamb, but I use it for beef and venison.  The meat is so tender and the sauce is so delicious.  The flavor of the sauce seems so complex but the only seasoning is salt and pepper.  

   You seriously have to try this Beef Stew!  Over the years, I have changed things a little.  My kids did not like the big pieces of celery, so I sliced the celery into thin pieces.  They ate it with no complaints then.   I use olive oil instead of the original vegetable oil.   

   The original recipe called for canned tomatoes.  I usually use the petite diced tomatoes now.  In the summer, when fresh tomatoes are available, I will use those.  (The tasteless ones at the grocery the rest of the year don’t have the flavor of the canned ones.  After all, they do pick them at the peak of harvest.)  Depending on how many are going to be here for dinner, I might add a little more meat or a couple more potatoes.

#5 Ham and Bean Soup

   I grew up on beans and cornbread, cornbread and beans.  We had them a lot!  It was an inexpensive dish to make for a family. 

   You would think that after having that dish so much, I would be over it, but I still crave bean soup each fall.  This bean soup is full of flavor and much better than what we made growing up back then.

   So there they are, 5 Awesome Fall Recipes Perfect For This Wonderful Season!  Hope you enjoy them, too!