Thursday, January 12, 2012

Turk-en Soup!

Thinking more about this soup, I think I should have called it Chick-ey Soup. The stock was made using a whole chicken, and the "meat balls" made from Turkey. Hmpf...what do you think?
I love soup. I would make it everyday if my family would let me get away with it. I think it's a fabulous one pot meal.
Today's soup is a chicken based soup with ground turkey breast meatballs, spinach, and cut spaghetti. My  family thought it was delicious. You'll enjoy it too!
I started off with a whole chicken. After cleaning the chicken, I placed the chicken in a large stock pot and covered the chicken with water.  I added one whole onion, peeled, 3 carrots, peeled, and 2 stalks of celery and then seasoned everything with salt, pepper and 2 bayleaves.
Bring the water to a boil and then cover the pot and let the chicken simmer for about 1 - 1/12 hours.
Take the chicken out of the pot and let the chicken cool enough to handle and take the meat off the bone. I like to leave the breasts whole and then slice. The dark meat gets taken off in pieces.
The carrots, celery and onions should be very soft.  Put them in the blender and let the blender whirl until you have a nice creamy mixture. If needed, add a little of the chicken stock from the stock pot. Add the vegetable puree back into the "broth". The pureed carrots add such a delicous sweetness to the stock!
I had a package of ground turkey breast and made delicious "meatballs" to go into the soup.
To make the meatballs I added 1/2 onion, which was finely chopped and 2 cloves of garlic, also chopped very fine. Instead of using breadcrumbs I added 1/2 cup of oatmeal, not the instant kind, 1 egg, salt, pepper, a few tablespoons of fresh chopped parsley and 1/4 cup of grated cheese.
Mix all togther and make into small balls, about the size of a walnut.
Drop these into the simmering broth and then cover and let the "meat"balls cook through.
Once the turkey meat balls were cooked, I took out about 8 cups of the stock and in another pot I cooked 1/2 pound of cut spaghetti. In the last minute of cooking the pasta I added 4 cups of fresh spinach leaves.
Turkey balls simmering in stock

When served we all grated a little more fresh Parmiagiano Reggiano right on top!
And the whole chicken that was boiled to make the broth?
It was served sliced with a tangy red bell pepper chimichurri sauce! Everyone was happy! Now that's what I'm talking about! Making everyone HAPPY! lol!


No comments:

Post a Comment