Mini Meatball Soup

If you stick around, you'll find I'm a big fan of Rachel Ray's recipes.  She tends to strike a good balance of healthy ingredients, inexpensiveness, and speed.  All good things.  One of the first (and most used) cook books I purchased was her 365 days, No Repeats.

While its not in the book, I saw her make the Mini Meatball Soup on Food Network and decided to give it a try.  I won't say its my favorite soup, but its pretty darned tasty.  I can also attest that it is very good with grilled cheese sandwiches.

Mini Meatball Soup

You don't have to use the meatloaf mix for the meatballs.  I've always made do with 80% lean beef and things turned out for the tasty.

Be warned, though:  making the meatballs can be deceptively slow going.  It's much faster if you can blackmail score yourself some helpers.  If you've got kids, this would probably be a great time to throw on some grubby clothes (or aprons) and let them help you.  Put all the ingredients for the meatballs into a plastic baggy and let them squish it around -- or just throw it all into a bowl and have them mix it by hand.  Most kids seem to love this sort of messy, squishy activity.  You can then portion out the meat and let them roll the balls.  Just make sure that you add them to the soup yourself.  Getting splashed with hot chicken broth is not a happy fun time for kids.

An alternative is using a cookie scoop.  If you make cookies more than three times a year, these gadgets are fantastic.  You get evenly portioned cookies and don't have to scrap the dough off a spoon with another spoon.  I've always hated that part.

BONUS:  If you're not drowning in a wealth of homemade stock, and don't particularly care about everything being organic, you can usually pick up some nice chicken broth at the Dollar Tree store.  I think it's Kendal Farms, but the ingredients list didn't make me flash back to chemistry class, and I consider that a good sign.  It's decently tasty, can be had by the quart for $1, and seals back up if you don't use the whole thing.