Name: Victoria Breck*
Class Year: 2008
Country of Residence: Belgium

* Victoria is one of this competition’s judges, so this recipe will not be considered – it’s simply delicious, and needs to be shared!

Why is this recipe great? What’s its backstory? 

I was desperate to use up the crumbs from a bag of pizza dough crackers (so salty and delicious), so I started thinking about recipes that would involve meatballs… that day we went shopping and found minced chicken (relatively unusual for Belgium!) so we snatched it up, and threw together this soup. It has now become on regular rotation at our house. It’s so deep in flavour, if you do have the Parmesan rind don’t skip it, the broth becomes liquid gold. This soup is also very versatile, I have purposely not put amounts because you can really work with what you have, or what combination of vegetables you prefer.

Chicken Meatball Soup

Serves 4. Takes approx. 45 minutes.

Ingredients:

For the meatballs:

• 250g minced chicken
• ¼ tsp garlic powder (or fresh garlic)
• 2 tablespoons chopped parsley (or dry if that’s all you have)
• 1 tablespoon chopped thyme (or dry if that’s all you have)
• 1 egg
• ½ cup breadcrumbs (I often use the leftover crumbs from boxes of crackers- with some crackers in the blender)
• Salt & Pepper

For the soup:

• Olive oil
• Salt & Pepper
• Onion
• Carrots (yellow and orange for colour variety if possible)
• 1 tablespoon dried thyme or herbes de provence
• Leeks
• Celery
• White carrots
• Broth (your choice)
• Bay leaf
• Parmesan rind if you have it leftover
• Chopped fresh parsley or chives for serving

Instructions:

1. First get the soup started, chop all of your veggies into similar sized pieces. Pour a glug of olive oil into a large heavy bottomed pot and start sautéing your onions and leeks. Add in the dried thyme or herbes de provence.
2. After a few minutes add in the carrots and celery. When the vegetables have softened cover them with stock of your choice (chicken or vegetable), throw in a bay leaf and the parmesan rind (if you have it) and let that simmer as you work on the meatballs.
3. For the meatballs, add all the ingredients into one bowl, and mix well with your hands.
4. Roll into meatball size balls (as big or small as you want them in your soup)
5. In a frying pan, put a small amount of neutral oil (sunflower, peanut, etc.) and brown the meatballs (you do not need to cook them through, you just need to ensure that they are browned on all sides. You should do this in a few batches not to crowd them in the pan.
6. Once browned, move the meatballs to a plate covered with paper towels to remove some excess oil. From there you can drop them directly into your pot of soup to finish cooking.
7. Let the soup continue to simmer (you can play with the ratio of broth to ingredients based on how soupy you like your soup!)

Source:

Own invention!