Peter A said:I tried something different for chicken soup last night - small chicken
meatballs instead of just pieces of chicken. Otherwise it was a
traditional soup with carrots, celery, leeks, spinach, and pasta.
3 boned, skinned chicken thighs, cut up
1/2 medium onion, chopped
Zap the above in a food processor until ground to a fairly fine
consistency. Transfer to a bowl and stir in:
1 egg
1/2c dry breadcrumbs
1 tsp "Italian" seasoning
1/3c finely diced smoked ham (really small dice)
1 tsp salt
Pepper to taste
Form mixture into 1 inch balls and drop in simmering soup to cook.
What soup... you offer no recipe for soup... just a recipe for a meat
mixture. Cooking meat balls in plain water ain't any kind of soup, in
fact it would be scummy, smelly, and inedible. All you made is
poached chicken dumplings, but that water needs to be dumped.
The proper method is to form the chicken mixture into quenelles, wrap
each securely in a double layer of plastic wrap and poach in plain
water. This way none of the flavor is lost... then add the poached
quenelles to a proper soup... what you made isn't fit to slop hogs.
An alternative method is to pan fry or roast the meat balls and then
add to a soup... would go well in a ministrone... I think that's
called dago wedding soup.
Anyway, nothing new or genious about this poaching concept, I've
posted it often over many years as a way to encourage folks to grind
their own meat... any kind of meat can be poached thusly, especially
seafood, shrimp works especially well... to stretch the shrimp blend
half and half with lean pork... very nice added to an oriental noodle
soup. But you need to actually make a soup, you can't make a soup by
dumping meat balls into plain water, reason should be obvious to
anyone who knows even the most basic rudiments of cookery.
Sheldon
