It Isn’t Barbecue Weather Yet….
 | Author:
Eileen Clarke, Rifles and Recipes
Author: Rifles and Recipes |
It Isn’t Barbecue Weather Yet….
Eileen Clarke
Rifles and Recipes
I’ve been thinking of secret ingredients lately, and this recipe has one of my favorites. It’s the chicken broth. It may look like a typo, but it’s not. Venison, be it deer, elk, moose or antelope, has always seemed to me to need a bit of sweetening, and chicken broth is just sweet enough to fill that niche. Sometimes I use all chicken, sometimes half and half, as here. It’s all a matter of individual taste. Make the soup this way, and maybe next time with all chicken or even all beef broth.
This next bit isn’t so much a secret ingredient as much as a secret shortcut.
I used to toast bread and then put it into the food processor to make dry bread crumbs for meatballs, but I find moister ones mix more easily with other ingredients and don’t need extra moisture to keep the meatball mix from getting too dry. Now, I just take the fresh bread or rolls, break them up into the food processor, and pulse them a few times until they’re crumbs. Much simpler even than buying ready-to-use bread crumbs in a box. One less thing to buy, one less thing to plan for.
Italian Meatball Soup
Makes 10 cups/2½ quarts
Meatball Ingredients
1½ pounds ground venison (deer, elk, antelope, moose, whatever)
¾ cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup fresh bread crumbs
1 tablespoon dried basil leaf
1 teaspoon onion powder
½ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon ground rosemary
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon coarse ground black pepper
Soup Ingredients
4 cups beef broth
4 cups chicken broth
2 15 ounce cans diced tomatoes
¼ cup dried onion flakes
2 tablespoons dried basil leaf
1 teaspoon ground rosemary
2 tablespoons powdered shiitake mushrooms*
Grated Parmesan cheese
Cooking
1. If it’s more convenient, mix the meatball ingredients together the night before, then cover tightly and chill until you’re ready to cook. That will allow the flavors to mix and develop.
2. If the meatballs are in the fridge, set them out on the counter while you start the soup pot so they’ll be a bit warmer when you cook them. In a 5-quart Dutch oven or soup pot, combine the beef and chicken broths, tomatoes, onion flakes, dried basil, ground rosemary and powdered shiitake mushrooms. Turn the pot on high until it comes to a simmer.
3. Keeping the soup at a low boil, drop the meatballs into the soup one at a time (about 1” diameter each). If the soup stops bubbling, slow down the meatball additions and raise the heat a bit until it does come back to a low boil.
4. When all the meatballs are in, gently stir them into the soup, gently submerging them, cover the pot and let it simmer 30-40 minutes.
5. Serve with grated Parmesan cheese and a slice or two of garlic bread.
*If you don’t have access to ground shiitakes, puree dehydrated mushrooms in a food processor. (Costco sells whole, dehydrated shiitakes and ‘gourmet mix’ mushrooms in great big jars.) About ¼ cup loosely packed shiitakes will give you 2 tablespoons powdered.
A whole book of wild game soups, stews and chilies? And over a quarter of them are chilies? Yup. It’s on sale too, through April 1. Eileen’s The Wild Bowl cookbook has 100 recipes and is a great addition to your go-to recipe list! Available at https://www.riflesandrecipes.com/406-521-0273
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PhotoCredit: Eileen Clark
Image 1 Caption: Eileen with her famous Smiling Elk
***No room for photo~ S Twm***
