Italian Meatball Soup

Both of my camera memory cards told me that I was out of memory this weekend. I'm usually pretty good about keeping them cleaned out, so it surprised me. As I went back through my photos to see what I could delete, I realized that I had taken a lot of photos intending to do blog posts with them, but those posts never materialized. I'm going to try to get those out this week, so if things seem sort of random, that's why.

First up - The recipe for Italian Meatball Soup.

I have no idea where this recipe came from, but I do know that I've tweaked it over the years. I really have been making it for years.

Italian Meatball Soup

Meatball Ingredients:

1 lb ground turkey

1 chub/roll package Jimmy Dean sausage

2 egg whites

3/4 cup Italian seasoned breadcrumbs

1/4 cup water

1 1/2 tsp Italian Seasoning

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Soup Ingredients:

2 32ox boxes chicken broth

1 14.5oz can Italian Style diced tomatoes

1 1/2 cup small pasta, like fusilli or shells

5 oz coarsely chopped spinach

1/4 cup shredded parmesan cheese

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 425 degrees F. Combine all meatball ingredients. Shape into 1 1/2 inch balls and place in a shallow baking pan that has been sprayed with no-stick cooking spray. Bake 10 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, in a large saucepan, combine broth and tomatoes. Cover, bring to a boil. Stir in pasta, cover and simmer for 5 minutes. Add meatballs. Simmer, uncovered, 5 minutes or until the pasta is tender. Stir in spinach. Remove from heat and let stand 2-3 minutes. Serve in bowls sprinkled with parmesan cheese.

Notes:

I actually use the Jennie-O Turkey Store packages that are 1.25 lbs. If I were more organized/frugal I'd take that extra quarter pound of meat and save it so I'd be getting a "free" meal every four packages, but I don't. Hmm... maybe I should!

I use homemade stock instead of boxed broth these days, but won't hesitate to use it again if I ever find myself out of the good stuff.

I also use a pint of my home-canned tomatoes instead of the can. This means that mine aren't the Italian Seasoned kind. I just add more seasoning to make up for it. Which leads me to...

I don't buy Italian Seasoning. I have all the different herbs that make it up on my spice rack, so I just add a pinch of this and a little of that until I get to about two teaspoons worth of herbs. Luckily making soup is more of an art than a science, so it's okay to do this.

I never use the same pasta two times in a row. This time, as you can see in the photo, I used a cup of stelline. I've also used the Barilla Piccolini Farfalle. Just any smallish pasta will do.

If you have leftovers, the pasta tends to absorb a lot of liquid, but it reheats just fine!

This time, I doubled the meatball recipe and just froze the extras. Now when I want to make this again in a few weeks, all the hard work will have been done for me! Yay!