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Mindless Meatball Minestrone


© Richard Mann

Feb 28, 2002


Today's modern convenience foods are wonderful. While a made-from-scratch soup with your own soaked-overnight beans, home-canned tomatoes, and homemade meatballs is both delicious and satisfying to make, concocting a similar dish from canned and frozen pre-prepared ingredients is easy and fast. And these days, we really like fast things.

The miracle ingredient in this fabulous minestroni is the frozen meatballs. We buy them in large bags at Sam's Club and dearly love them in just about anything you can make with meatballs. (Ask me some time to give you our recipe for barbequed meatballs. They're so good we serve them at our family weddings.)

This recipe is "mindless" because all you have to do is open a couple of cans and a few bags of frozen stuff, toss them together in a pot, and you've got a warm, filling, tastes-like-you've-been-cooking-it-for-hours meal that you'll love. It's so easy!

Mindless Meatball Minestroni

  • 2 14.5-ounce cans chicken broth
  • 1 14.5-ounce can beef broth
  • 1 pound frozen mixed vegetables
  • 1 18-ounce bag frozen meatballs
  • 1 14.5-ounce can stewed tomatoes
  • 1/2 cup dry macaroni
  • 1 15-ounce can light red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
  • 6 Tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese (fresh, if possible)

In a large Dutch oven or stock pot, heat the chicken and beef broth. Add the frozen vegetables and meatballs while they are still frozen (saves time). Add the canned tomatoes and the uncooked macaroni. Cover the pot and continue cooking until it boils, which takes about ten minutes.

When the soup mixture boils, uncover it and stir it well. Add the drained and rinsed kidney beans and the Italian seasoning. Reduce the heat to medium and continue cooking, stirring frequently. Cook until the macaroni is tender, which will be another six or seven minutes.

Serve immediately. Add a tablespoon of grated fresh Parmesan cheese to each bowl as a garnish.

Makes 6 single-bowl servings.

Based on a recipe originally appearing in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune.


© Copyright Richard Mann, 2002. All rights reserved. Please contact the author at algernon@suite101.com for permission to use this article (includes reprints in mailing lists, newsletters, and/or any other purpose/format) and give details of its proposed use. Any and all use of this article in any way without permission is prohibited under copyright law. Of course, you can always print these recipes for your own personal use (that's what they're here for). Please feel free to link to this page.

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Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: View all related messages
2.   Mar 6, 2002 4:22 PM
In response to message posted by jerrib:

OK, Jerri, I'll try to stir my stumps, so to speak, and get that into writing for you. Wa ...

-- posted by algernon
1.   Mar 4, 2002 10:44 PM
This sounds good, but now I want the recipe for Barbequed Meatballs!

-- posted by jerrib



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