Chickarina soup

Serious Eats is one of my favorite food blogs, great food cred, smart writing, good research and a site that you can count on as solid and yet always new.

Italian wedding soup is always a favorite, but Serious Eats introduced chickarina soup just last week. Basically, it's a great chicken soup with chicken meatballs, and pearl pasta added to a  basic chicken soup.

Today was the day to try. After a number of autumnal nights, including clicking on the heat, soup was calling for dinner.

The recipe is pretty simple  -- chickarina soup

The chicken meatballs emerged from the food processor just as the recipe called for. The soup meat came from some chicken tenders, chunked and browned. Skipped making the stock from scratch but used a good chicken broth.  A bunch of onion, garlic, carrot and celery browned up in a soup pot, along with a bay leaf and some gentle long cooking gave the stock a real home-cooked flavor .

Dropped in the chicken meatballs = awesome and fun to watch they float upwards! The recipe calls for baking soda that added that lightness to what would otherwise be meatballs. These really were chicken meatball dumplings, which were just delicious.

With all the ingredients melding, some spinach from the fridge called and a couple handfuls added some color and texture.

Crostini with garlic, buffalo mozzarella and fresh tomatoes added to the meal.

A good first outing for what will be a standard soup dinner - and probably a regular come colder weather.