Easy and Filling Italian Meatball Soup
This hearty soup comes together in under half an hour! Full of veggies and meat, nobody will be hungry afterward. Loads of Italian flavor make it satisfying as well as nourishing.
Ingredients
- 1 onion
- 2 stalks celery
- 1 bell pepper, any color
- 8 oz. mushrooms
- 5 cloves garlic
- 1 jar pasta sauce
- 1 quart meat stock or broth, any flavor
- 1-2 C cooked beans or 1 can beans of choice (I used navy beans that were already soaked and cooked)
- 1 T olive oil or other cooking fat
- 2-3 lb. bulk Italian sausage, uncooked
OR mix your own sausage using
- 2 lb. ground pork (or other ground meat
- 2 tsp. garlic powder
- 2 tsp. salt
- 2 tsp. Italian seasoning
- 2 tsp. fennel seeds
- 1/2 tsp. black pepper
Instructions
- Heat a soup pot over medium heat. Add a bit of olive oil or other fat if you are using turkey or chicken sausage. If you are using pork, it will have enough fat of its own and you needn't add any. (If you are making your own sausage, mix all ingredients together now. See below for proportions.) Form Italian sausage into meatballs and set them in the pot to brown. Cover so they cook through quickly. Turn them to brown all sides. Remove to a bowl and continue until all the meat is cooked.
- While the meatballs are browning, chop onion, celery, pepper, mushrooms, and garlic.
- If needed, add some oil to the pot. Otherwise, use the fat left from cooking the meatballs to cook the vegetables until soft, maybe 10 minutes.
- Stir in the jar of pasta sauce, meat stock or broth, and beans.
- Heat through and add the meatballs back into the pot. Simmer on low for awhile longer, or serve as soon as everything is cooked and thoroughly heated.
Notes
1. The recipe calls for bulk Italian sausage formed into meatballs. If you are in a hurry, it also works to simply crumble and brown the sausage, then add the veggies and proceed with the recipe as written. The soup will be different, but also good, with a bit less fuss.
2. If you like, precooked Italian sausages also work well. Slice them into bites to add with the last few ingredients.
3. Good Italian sausage can be hard to find. The day I photographed this soup, I couldn't find the sausage I normally use. The only one I saw had corn syrup, canola oil, BHT, and so on. For EACH POUND of ground meat (I used pork, but others are fine), add:
1 tsp salt
1 tsp Italian seasoning
1 tsp fennel seeds
1/2 tsp black pepper
a clove or two of minced garlic or 1 tsp. garlic powder
Add more pepper or some red pepper flakes if you like it spicy, and maybe a little Parmesan cheese if you like.
4. The veggies are not set in stone. Substitute frozen peas or green beans for the navy beans, leave out the bell pepper or mushrooms, add carrots, use up leftover bits of vegetables, etc.