Chicken Meatball Soup

Chicken noodle soup? It sounds a bit boring... how about instead, a chicken meatball soup? It sounds better, doesn't it?

Chicken meatball can be really flat in its flavor, espcially if you made it with chicken breast. That's why I made my chicken meatball with thighs. However, although I use chicken thighs, we need some fat to enhance the flavor. I think most flavorful fat is pork fat... Yes! Bacon will work. :) Also, parmigiano-reggiano and parsley will give more layers of flavor to the chicken meatballs.

Chicken Meatball Soup
(Yield: 4 servings / Cooking time: 1 hour and 15 minutes*)
* The cooking time includes 45 minutes of cooking time for 50 meatballs as well.

Ingredients:

Chicken meatballs * This recipe makes about 50 chicken meatballs.
+ 8 chicken thighs
+ 130g bacon
+ one small onion, diced small
+ 3 garlic cloves, minced
+ 1/2 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano
+ one handful flat leave parsley
+ 1 cup panko bread crumbs
+ one egg
+ salt and pepper


Chicken meatball soup
+ 1 quart low sodium chicken broth
   or 2/3 qt white chicken stock + 1/3 qt water
   (for white chicken stock recipe, please click here.)
+ 12-16 chicken meatballs (3-4 meatballs per serving)
+ 1 cup short pasta*
+ a half bunch of broccoli rabe, chopped roughly
+ one large garlic clove, sliced thinly
+ 2 small tomatoes (you can use canned tomatoes)
+ 1/4-1/2 tsp red pepper flakes**
+ 1-2 tsp sherry vinegar***
+ chopped parsley
+ grated parmigiano-reggiano
+ olive oil
+ salt and pepper
* You can use any short pasta such as macaroni, elbow, ribbon... Or, you can cut spaghetti or linguine into short pieces.
** Adjust the amount depending on how spicy you want the dish to be.
*** If your tomatoes are too ripe, you might need two tsp of vinegar. If your tomatoes are acid enough, you might not need the sherry vinegar at all.




Procedures:

Chicken meatballs
1. If you can find boneless, skinless chicken thighs, please use them. If not, remove skin and bone, and trim any excess fat. Please save the bones for later... you can make chicken stock with them.


2. Dice bacon in small pieces, and cook it over low heat to render the fat, and crisp the bacon pieces without burning them.


3. Set the crisped bacon on one side of the pan, and add chopped onion and minced garlic to the pan. Sweat the onion and garlic with the rendered bacon fat until the onion is translucent. Mix onion, garlic and bacon well and let them cool to room temperature on the pan.


4. Ground chicken thighs with food processor. Pulse 12-15 times per batch. With my mini food processor, I had to ground the chicken thighs in four batches. Please make sure not to puree the chicken, but just ground it with some small chunks.


5. Grate parmigiano-reggiano. We need 1/2 cup.


6. Chop parsley.


7. Mix all the ingredients together: ground chicken thighs, cooled bacon+onion+garlic mixture, grated parmigiano-reggiano, chopped parsley, panko bread crumbs and one egg. Season with salt and pepper. Please be careful with salt because parmigiano-reggiano and bacon already contain lots of salt.


8. Preheat the oven to 390°F (200°C) while rolling the meatballs. If you want to brown your meatball more, you can coat the rolled meatballs with little bit of flour. Prepare two baking pan lined with parchment paper or silicone pad, and place the meatballs not too close to each other.

9. Bake the meatballs in preheated oven on the top rack for 15-20 minutes.



Chicken soup
1. In a large pot, drizzle about 2 tsp olive oil and cook sliced garlic and red pepper flake over low heat, just enough to infuse the flavor to the olive oil.


2. Pour chicken broth into the pot and add little bit of salt. When it boils, add chopped tomatoes to the pot. After 3 minutes, add short pasta. Another 5 minutes after adding pasta, add chicken meatballs and chopped broccoli rabe. Simmer for 5 more minutes. Taste it, and if the soup needs some acidity, add 1 or 2 tsp of sherry vinegar. Adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper.

* If you want to make the soup in advance, do not add pasta while cooking. Instead, right before serving the soup, bring the soup to a boil, add pasta, and cook until the pasta is done (6-8 minutes).

3. Serve immediately in a soup bowl, topped with chopped parsley and grated parmigiano-reggiano.


Enjoy~