Saturday, 14 January 2012

Italian Wedding Soup and Updates

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who offered help and suggestions with improving my blog and/or getting my own domain. I will be trying to get in touch with a few of you sometime in the near future, don't take offense if I don't send you an email. It's not that I don't like you or anything but I can only ask so many people for help!


Now let's get to cooking.

I love soup. It's way up there on my list of favorite things to eat. Coincidentally, soup is the only thing that I can ever cook with any consistency.

So when Lizzy made an entire blog post about soup and soup recipes I was determined to try and make one. One soup stuck out in particular, the Italian Wedding Soup recipe. Why? Because she decided to add this message at the top:

"First up...simple and impossible to mess up:"


First things though, I decided to omit celery from the recipe because we didn't have any at home (and I hate celery) and I used macaroni for pasta because I'm a poor University student.

And while we're on the topic of first things, first problem I encountered was that a lot of my meatballs decided to fall apart and split in half. :(

Crumbling monstrosities...

Maybe I wasn't gentle enough with them. Perhaps I added too many sauteed onions to the mixture or maybe I should have just thrown them into the soup instead of trying to cook them for a bit first. No matter, the point is, I had misshapen and fragmented meatballs in my soup.

And here we have a final product:


Looks a lot nicer than the stuff in the pot. But looks are deceiving.

The biggest issue I had when making this soup was that it was way too salty. This could be due to the brand of chicken broth I used. Or maybe it's because I decided to use regular ground beef for the meatballs.

And then pour the meat drippings and fat from the pan into the soup.

. . . .

Derp.


But other than that I think the soup turned out fairly decently. So I guess you win Lizzy. Only took me an hour to make and I'm excited to try cooking or baking something else again in the future. Though not the lobster bisque because WHY ARE LOBSTER TAILS SO EXPENSIVE?!

Oh and for those that are wondering, I'm still working on that hollow book. Slow and steady.

76 comments:

  1. Maybe if you drained the meatballs on paper towels before you added them to the soup. Fat from the pan should be discarded. Unless you have a roast in the oven - the meat and fat drippings make delicious gravy when mixed with a little flour and water.

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  2. Hahah italian wedding soup sounds pretty tricky, but good for you for trying to make it! I'll stick to campbells.

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  3. haha shocked oven is shocked at your horrible cooking few

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  4. Because sea insects are...I don't know. Lobster sucks, anyway!

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  5. Trying out new recipes is always fun, although they can be a tad bit expensive.

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  6. Soup is something I've never tried to make myself. Maybe I should give it a shot. See how long it takes for the house to burn down.

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  7. Italian wedding soup is fricking delicious.

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  8. Hey! At least you had a go at making soup from scratch!! Good for you!

    My favourite soup is Hot Bloody Mary Tomato Soup (the recipe is sort of self-explanatory in the title! But please use real tomatoes...). Celery is optional! And this works for me every time I have a cold.

    :-)

    Take care
    x

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  9. haha we actually ate meatballs in gravy with mash today because we had no sausages, the life of us students hey! now following!

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  10. Yeah was wondering about the hollow book, to see if it actually took. Not a big soup fan, but being a picky eater not a fan of much so that's a given..haha

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  11. Funny the price of lobster, I heard in the old days it was soo cheap that people used it for prison food. Then someone decided to make it the new pricey food.

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  12. On a haunch, I'd guess that adding more bread crumbs to your meatball mixture would toughen the consistency and keep them from falling apart (though this is something I have to independently verify myself first).

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  13. Dat oven. KILL IT!!!

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  14. Ahah, funny, very interesting blog. THanks :P

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  15. Oooo lobster tails? Yes very pricey but absolutely delicious. I can't cook to save my life but your soup sounds delicious even if you thought it was too salty.

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  16. The soup looks good to me :)

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  17. I feel like I laughed at this post a lot more than I should have, lol. But yeah, soup is delicious.

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  18. Lobsters are hella expensive indeed, but if you can get your hands on one of them with a discount or something, go for it. They're delicious-ass bastards.

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  19. This sounds so awesome man, I'd love to make this kind of thing for myself. I agree with lobster tails too, damn I hate how expensive lobster is, it's ridiculous. Good luck with the hollow book too as well.

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  20. thats great that you've started cooking. practice makes perfect

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  21. last pic is so funny ^^ good work on the cooking man. My meals are largly based around meat ^^

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  22. DWei, the only soup that I can make is actually called tea.

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    1. Bahaha!! That was hilarious!!

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  23. Final product looks good. Thanks for the link, definitely will have to try the recipe out.

    Although I might just drop the meatballs in raw as you mentioned.

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  24. Soup is So good this time of year! I've never attempted to make any soup. I had a boyfriend once though that made soup ALL the time. I mean ALLLLL the time. I finally had to break up with him because I couldn't handle soup every night for dinner.

    BTW - Your balls look mighty tasty.

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  25. If it tasted good, you did good at cooking. Everything else doesn't count ;).

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  26. LOL!!!

    I love Italian Wedding Soup. When my grandma makes it, it's sooo delicioussss :)

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  27. i can smell it from here

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  28. Man I love soup so yummy and delicious! I used to practically live on it :D

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  29. Good job on making the soup and hoping to see the finished hollow book soon :)

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  30. I am a huge fan of soup, the one I find hardest to start making is cream soup of any kind.

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  31. sounds like you need more binding in the meatballs. Normally I try to add an extra egg (if that's what you are using to bind) to any recipe I'm doing just to make sure they don't fall apart until I skewer them with my fork.

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  32. It's no good. I can't critique your soup until I've tasted it. I'll send you a tupperware container, pop some soup in and post it back to me.

    Ta.

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  33. As a guy who's been cooking for a long ass time, you've gotten a great start. Let me pass onto you a little Italian secret. I see the recipe calls for just an egg to hold the meat together, but for my meatballs, I like to put a little bit of ricotta cheese in them. About 3-4 tablespoons will do. No, they don't come out tasting like cheese at all. It gives the meatballs a slightly creamy texture and helps bind them together. You could also use a few tablespoons of milk since you're on a budget. I put a bit of milk in my meatloaf to help keep it together. It won't taste weird, I promise.

    Also, before you form the meatballs, put a little bit of olive oil on your palm and rub your hands together. Not only will the coating of olive oil glaze the outside of the meat and add to the flavor, it actually prevents the meat from sticking to your hands, which will allow you to pack them together more tightly and efficiently.

    Who'd have thought, right? I may be a drunk who draws stupid comics, but I also love my food.

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  34. meh... I don't like soup. :/ And never tried lobster, but yeah they are freaking expensive for some animal tails :/
    Crab legs (those long ones) also cost an arm and a leg..

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  35. Is this the start of your life as a chef? It would make for a great story: I tried making soup cause a blogger mentioned it was fool proof and the rest is history!

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  36. re:your comment:
    Check eBay or something, they're bound to have something Fluttershy-related.
    Also, the email follows in my next comment. I did that last time too, but you ignored my advice to not publish said comment, so I deleted it myself. Sorry, can't have my personal email out in the open (even though it's available someplace else).

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  37. damn, that oven is really shocked

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  38. I am a soup lover myself... but sadly my skills only extend to heating up Ramen? But italian wedding soup.... freekin delicious!!

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  39. i'm really glad i don't have a judgemental oven

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  40. funny bro! im following you now! Check out my blog!

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  41. Gotta get some bidning agent for those meatballs like egg, cornmeal/bread, or starch/flour.

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  42. I adore Lizzy and her stunning pics and recipes! She's my fave cooking blogger :)

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  43. lol, that's so awesome. I find bought stocks way too salty so I make my own.

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  44. I don't make soup because I am so bad at it, and I'm not a huge fan. My mom makes an amazing version of Italian wedding soup. Maybe I'll send that recipe your way (and it sounds much easier than this recipe)

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  45. Yum! You've made me hungry for soup now. Looks great!

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  46. Doesn't look that nice tbh ^^. But glad to hear it was at least decent.

    And yeah I love soup too, think that lentil soup is pretty nice. Try it if you haven't, who knows you might enjoy it and if you don't well it's not the end of the world.

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  47. Rats, I'm sorry about the salt issue! Some of the canned chicken broths are really salty...I'm sure that was the problem. I hope it was still edible! And I hear you on the price of lobster...especially in a land locked state. And then my soup tasted more like paprika than lobster! Thanks for trying one of my recipes...I'm delighted that you gave this a shot!

    PS...I use a nonstick pan for cooking my meatballs...that helps a lot.

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  48. I think I just read somewhere that it was national soup month or week. So, timely and post. And my oven always looks at me like that too!

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  49. i think the poring of meat drippings probably made it too salty. But I'm no chef, that's just a guess.

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  50. Oh maaan, you're such a derp! :D

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  51. gratz man, i cant even boil wather

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  52. i want some soup now lol, i kind of like salty italian wedding soup but if its too salty i can see why it wouldnt taste right

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  53. I freaking love capers http://allrecipes.com/recipe/chicken-breasts-in-caper-cream-sauce/

    I made the sauce with table cream (18% MF) instead of Whipping cream (Liek 35%) and it still turned out too thick for me. Adding a splash of white wine gave the dish some spunk, too!

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  54. lol awh u got slapped, i just get the "ur funny bart" line all the time, to like any pick up line. as for soups maybe you should just stick to the ones that come in a can, thats what i do.

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  55. Do you have a slow cooker or a Dutch oven? I would have done the meatballs in one of those first... Cook them on a low heat for like 6-8 hours and they taste AMAZING, and tend not to fall apart as easily.

    xo

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  56. Lobster tails are so expensive because that's usually where they keep their spare change. Gratz on finishing a recipe, I would burn water.

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  57. Maybe italian weddings are this unpredictable as well. Kudos for your continued writing. Keep it up!

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  58. oh god. why are you making me more hungry????
    looks tasty :)

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  59. Ah yummy. I love Italian Wedding Soup. (I like to use anci de pepe.) I'm glad your's worked out albeit meat ball chucks and a wee bit salty.

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  60. Awesome for cooking! That was a great post Lizzy did and I think your soup looks just great. Remember the more you cook the more experience you will have!

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  61. Oh man people slay me on how much they spend on seafood. I worked a seafood counter from time to time, and this guy buys like 8 lobster tails. The total (on sale) was about $76 dollars.

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  62. If I try to cook anything, I'll burn the house down. So I avoid the kitchen as much as possible.

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  63. All that matters is that the meatball tastes good! who cares what it looks like as long as it can perform!

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