February 12: Italian Sausage Soup

Today I made a "Soup for Supper" from the Autumn section of the cookbook. It was nice and hot - great for a cold day. I started at 10:30, gathering the ingredients:

I combined the meatball ingredients: mild Italian sausage, 1/2 cup bread crumbs. an egg, 1/4 cup each of Parmesan cheese and milk, 1/2 tsp each of basil and pepper, and 1/4 tsp of garlic salt.

I flattened that into a square, then cut the square into 1-inch squares. In the crockpot, I put a quart of chicken broth, a tablespoon of tomato paste, a clove of garlic, and 1/4 tsp of red pepper flakes. Then I rolled the meat pieces into balls and put them in the crockpot:

I cooked it on low for about 5 hours, then I added 1/2 cup of mini pasta and cooked it for 30 more minutes:

When the pasta was cooked I wilted in a bag of spinach leaves:

I served the soup with Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top:

I really like this soup, but there are some things that could make it better. For one thing, it was way too salty. I'm not sure where the salt was coming from, but I suspect the chicken broth. Next time I will use low-sodium chicken broth and substitute garlic powder for the garlic salt. It was also extremely greasy. I think it's easy to refrigerate it overnight, then scrape the hardened grease off the top. Maybe I'll try making it a day ahead of time next time. It was a little too spicy for me, so I would probably eliminate the red pepper flakes. DH really liked it, as did the kids, but they agreed with me about it being too salty.