Updated Recipe:

My husband’s 93 year old grandmother passed away last week. Beppe was a lovely woman who had grandchildren, great grandchildren and even great great grandchildren. We have a family Facebook group and everyone was sharing pictures and memories. One cousin asked for Beppe’s meatball soup recipe. I only had my gluten free version and shared it. Upon re-examining it, I realized that it really needed an update. Here is the updated version.

Marrying into a Dutch family

When I first met my husband I found out that there are some things that just always happen on Sundays. After church you visit at family’s homes, have coffee and cake (yes cake comes before lunch; and no its doesn’t make any sense to me either), then you have soup and buns. Much of the time it was this meatball soup. My husband remembers making the little meatballs when he was a little kid, and eating a bunch of them raw. I wouldn’t suggest that..

Just so you know, I made this when my husband was at work so he couldn’t eat any raw meatballs. Everyone has their different way of making it. When I found out about my food allergies I knew I needed to find a new way to make this as well. This is my version…

Dutch Meatball Soup

I use my big soup pot. Other people use a large crock pot.

You’ll need easily 10 cups of vegetable stock, if you don’t have any on hand you can add 3- yeast free vegetable bouillon cubes(I use Go Bio)
2- medium onions- diced
4- carrots- pealed and diced
4 stalks of celery- diced
2 tsp. tamari sauce
2 lbs. lean ground beef, chicken or turkey
1/2 c. crushed tortilla chips or ground flax
2 tsp. parsley
1 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
2 c. broken up gluten free (or desired) spaghetti noodles. I actually use a combo of quinoa and brown rice for added protein

Bring water and bouillon cubes to a boil; then add in onion, carrots, celery and soy sauce. Let simmer for an hour. Mean while, put ground meat, crushed tortilla chips, sea salt, pepper, parsley and nutmeg all into a glass bowl. Mix all the ingredients together. Then make small (1/2 tsp sized) meatballs. Drop them into your soup. Let them cook at least 15 minutes before trying any. That way you’ll know they’re cooked.

You can either throw your noodles into your soup pot and let them cook for about 10 minutes, or you can cook them separately and add them into your bowl and top with soup. This way if you have others that do not have gluten allergies, they can have regular small egg noodles in their bowl for their soup. Which ever way works better for your family.