I love soup as everyone knows.
Mon mari loves meatballs – as does most of the rest of the world, including me. He is not very fond of having soup as a main course.
Always one to look for compromise, meatball soup is a favorite at our house. I make several different kinds.
This one is for fall, when the chard gives one last growth spurt before I pull it out and quit gardening for the winter.
Yes, I know…. I don’t have to stop growing vegetables here. I could have Brussels sprouts and leeks and broccoli growing well into January. I just have no desire to be tending my garden in the mud wearing a winter jacket. It’s a warm sunshine activity.
An easy trick for making small meatballs of roughly the same size for soup (or anything): Divide the meat mixture in half, then each half into thirds. Make 4 meatballs out of each third for a total of 24 meatballs. For larger meatballs divide each half in half….
Click here to Pin Meatball Vegetable Soup
PrintMeatball Vegetable Soup
This is full of healthy vegetables and makes a hearty main course. Pair it with fresh bakery bread or make some easy biscuits (recipe link below).
This serves 6 – 10 depending on what you have with it, and freezes well.
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 35 minutes
- Total Time: 55 minutes
- Yield: 8 servings 1x
- Category: Soup
Ingredients
- 16oz ground beef (500gr mince)
- 1 egg
- 1/4 cup bread crumbs
- 1 tsp oregano
- 1 tsp basil
- 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
- 2 cups (16oz / 450ml) beef stock
- 1 litre (quart) tomato juice
- 2 tsp dried basil
- 2 tsp dried oregano
- 1 tsp chili powder
- 1 onion, chopped
- 3 carrots, chopped
- 3 ribs celery, chopped
- 2 cups shredded cabbage
- 8oz (250gr) chard, chopped
- 1 1/2 cups (15oz, 450gr) white beans, drained, rinsed
- 2/3 cup quick-cooking barley
Instructions
- In large Dutch Oven (soup kettle) heat the beef stock and tomato juice over medium-high heat.
- Mix egg, breadcrumbs, oregano, basil and Worcestershire sauce.
- Add ground beef and mix well.
- Form into small meatballs, 1″ (2.5cm) in diameter.
- When stock/juice is boiling slowly add meatballs, keeping them separate until they start to cook.
- When soup is boiling again (after addition of meatballs) you can start adding the rest of the ingredients as they are ready.
- When raw vegetables are in, add herbs, chili powder, beans, and barley.
- Reduce heat, cover, and simmer until vegetables are tender and barley is done.
Notes
Prepare and add the vegetables in the following order: carrots, celery, onion, cabbage, chard. Keep the soup simmering while you work.
Add barley last. By the time the barley is done, 15 – 20 minutes, everything else should be done.
Keywords: meatball soup, vegetable soup
One way I get mon mari to be happy when I make soup for dinner is to also make biscuits.
Since I like easy, no-fuss recipes I usually make drop biscuits. There is no rolling or cutting so no risk of working the dough to much. They’re just ‘dropped’ off of a spoon.
This recipe for Oatmeal Drop Biscuits makes 6 biscuits in under 30 minutes.
Serve warm, right from the oven…. with butter, of course.
They’re even good the next day.
I could have this sort of comfort food all year round…totally delicious
Me too – I never tire of soup. Or biscuits.
I’ve gotten lazy over the years. Now, I use a tablespoon sized cookie scoop (or whatever size I need, I have several sizes) to do my meatballs and I bake them on parchment in the oven. It makes it easier to toss in what I need and I can freeze the rest if there’s too many though really, there’s rarely too many.
Nah – tossing them into the soup is lazier lol. I have never owned a cookie scoop, Actually, I didn’t know such a thing existed until now. I assume it’s used in place of a spoon for drop cookies?
You can use them for drop cookies, chocolate, all sorts of things and they come in a variety of sizes. I have a set of three similar to this one, but I bought them a long time ago when the original Chef catalog went out of business. (Now they’re owned by someone else) But I use them for melon balls, the big one for ice cream…lots of things. And when I toss my meatballs right in the soup, they have a tendency to fall apart a bit because I add a touch of milk to keep them really moist and I think that makes them more fragile.
https://smile.amazon.com/OXO-Grips-Medium-Cookie-Scoop/dp/B0000CDVD2/
I remember the Chef Catalog ! The things I have missed out on by not having scoops…. Part of it would be that we love ice cream but I never buy it. And I couldn’t be bothered with melon balls – we eat it too quickly.
I started relying on them more when my arthritis started getting worse in my hands. I can still form the meatballs and drop cookies, but can’t hardly use my hands the next day if I do. So I tried the scoops and they just work really well for me. I did just buy the most adorable ice cream scoop because I’m tired of hubs bending all my spoons and I do like a little taste of ice cream occasionally. But only the lactose free stuff so I buy Breyer’s. Or when we have company and I’ve made pie, they’re nice to have as well.
We used to have the family here both Christmas eve and Christmas morning but now that the girls are married, it’s just the two of us. Unless the weather is really bad, then they’ll stay over. But I made fruit salad to go with breakfast and used to use the scoops for the melon in that.