Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Dr. Tyler's Chicken Meatball and Tortellini Soup

I could use a comforting bowl of this soup right now. I have been having so many issues with my computer lately. Is anyone else getting the error message "operation aborted"? It seems that I can't visit some of my favorite blogs. This makes me frustrated for so many reasons!! This morning I wanted to make Donna's Oreo Cake, but I can't get onto her blog!! I love seeing what everyone is making and I want to stay updated with your blogs. Can anyone let me know if they have a fix to this? Or, are there people out there going crazy, just like me? If so, I'd like to offer you a bowl of this soup.

I chose to make this soup simply because I am working on cleaning out my freezer and pantry. I had these sweet little heart shaped ravioli in my freezer. Naturally, I was saving them for a "special occasion". Apparently, I never found the right "special occasion". I decided that anything using a Tyler recipe was special enough and I dug them out for this recipe. Why, oh, why do I always save things for a "special" occasion?

This soup was a little on the labor intensive side. Tyler give you the option of using 4 links of apple-chicken sausage or using the equivalent in ground chicken. I can tell you that you should totally opt for the ground chicken! The sausage I bought was hard to remove from the casing and was not soft or easy to crumble and mold into a meatball. Once my meatballs were formed, it dawned on me that I was very nevous about making meatballs with poultry. Because I am a very paranoid person, I was sure to overcook them. The rest of the soup was very easy to throw together. I thought the final outcome was very tasty and I thought the chicken meatball was a very original idea. The soup was adorable with those little heart shaped raviolis floating around. I like the light apple flavor of the soup and the meatball gave a wonderful flavor to the broth. I think the novelty of it all was lost on my husband. He liked the soup, but declared that the meatballs in the soup didn't count as meat. Does anyone else have a husband who has to have a huge amount of meat at every meal? It literally drives me crazy. Can you tell I'm in a wonderful mood today?
Chicken Meatballs
4 links organic chicken-apple sausage or equivalent ground chicken meat
1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs (2 slices fresh white bread ground up)
1/2 cup whole milk
1 egg
2 tbsp. chopped fresh Italian flat-leaf parsley
1/4 cup grated Parmigiano, plus 2 tbsp. for sprinkling
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper.
Soup
EVOO
3 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
4 fresh thyme sprigs
2 large carrots, cut into circles
1 medium onion, diced
2 ribs celery, diced
kosher salt
2 quarts reduced-sodium chicken broth
4 black peppercorns
2 tbsps. chopped fresh italian flat-leaf parsley
1 bay leaf
1 pound fresh refrigerated or frozen cheese tortellini, thawed **I used ravioli**
1/4 cup finely chopped italian flat-leaf parsley
grated parmigiano
fresh parlsey sprigs, for garnish
1 crusty French baguette **I served this with my pretzel rolls**
Preheat oven to 375F. Prepare meatballs by combining loose ground chicken meat (discard casings, if using sausages), bread crumbs, milk, egg, parsley, and the 1/4 cup parmigiano in a large mixing bowl. Season with salt and pepper, then mix until fully combined. Using a small ice cream scoop, make balls and set on a roasting tray. Drizzle lightly with oil and sprinkle with the 2 tbsps. Parmigiano. Roast in a preheated oven for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown and caramelized.
While the meatballs are roasting, prepare the soup. Set a large stockpot over medium heat. Add a 2-count of oil, the garlic, and thyme. Gently saute until frgrant, about 2 minutes. Add carrot, onion, and celery. Season with salt and cook for 5-7 minutes. Pour in chicken broth and add peppercorns, the 2 tbsps. parsley, and bay leaf. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer for 25 minutes.
Once meatballs are cooked, scrape them into the pot of chicken soup and add tortellini/ravioli. Bring to a boil and cook for 2-3 minutes to allow the flavors to come together. Remove peppercorns and bay leaf. Season with sal tand pepper and serve in shallow bowls. Sprinkle with parsley and grated parmigiano. Garnish each bowl with a parsley sprig and serve with some torn pieces of crusty bread/pretzel rolls.
I am submitting this recipe to Tyler Florence Fridays for this Friday's roundup. Head on over there Friday evening and see what everyone else cooked up this week!!

12 comments:

  1. oh my god! We DID, we DID marry the same man!!! Don't you know that in "man-world" soup doesn't even qualify as a meal? Not nearly substantial enough...and if a steak is less than 16 ounces, its really just a sandwich? lol I feel your pain, I do!
    Persoally, I think the soup looks fantastic! I hope you get your computer fixed soon. You didn't recently nistal Internet Explorer 8 did you? e had a bunch of internet issues when we rolled it out at work....

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  2. I don't mean to laugh, but my husband doesn't consider soup to be dinner! Unless I'm serving something else with it, he says it's just an appetizer!

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  3. Adorable ravioli!! The soup sounds awesome to me...but yes, hubby is the same way over here. have you gotten any closer to "solving" the operation aborted problem?

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  4. Funny on the soup issue. I think I have the only husband who will consider soup a meal as long as there is bread to go with it. Sometimes that aggravates me. I dont know why?

    Hope the operation abort issue has been solved?

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  5. Clearly you have young men and trust me, they'll come around to the soup as a meal, in time. Of course, you must serve it WITH something(s) else, lol. I'm sure I'd have loved this soup. Those ravioli are darling. My computer is always nuts and I find I sometimes get on a blog and can't get off, lol.

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  6. Looks great! The operation aborted is a conflict between ie 8 and the followers gadget in blogger. I took off my followers gadget altogether, some people have moved theirs down to the bottom of their site.
    I installed Mozilla Firefox too, so I use that to open up the sites that ie won't let me open. It has been going on for about a month though, I have no idea why they don't fix it.
    Girlichef told me about Mozilla Firefox, it is free and you can have both on your computer.

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  7. A beautiful soup--love the ravioli and the meatballs. It's a meal in my book! ;-)

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  8. The soup looks wonderful, even if it did take while. I agree with Natashya...I get that operations aborted thing when I use IE. I've been using Google chrome and it seems to run smoother.

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  9. Thanks to everyone who commented/emailed about IE8. I switched over to Firefox for blogging and it has been working great.

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  10. I love the idea for this soup, it is on my to do list for a cold and awful day.

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  11. My grandma's meatball chicken noodle soup was my favorite thing that she ever made. She can't remember anymore how she used to make this so I'll have to try Tyler's and see how it compares. I was having that internet issue as well and decided to just install Firefox. Problem solved!

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Thanks so much for taking the time to leave a comment! At the moment I am having a huge problem with spam so I've had to add comment moderation and close off comments to anonymous users. I apologize for the trouble and hope to return my comments to normal shortly.