Meatball minestrone soup

I was looking up some yummy soup recipes and realized I hadn't posted the soup recipe I made when I was looking for beef mince recipes :)

If anyone is interested, here's the recipe we created!

Meatball minestrone

500g mince
2 medium potatoes
2 sticks celery
2 carrots
1 small zucchini
1 onion
1 tomato
1 small/medium green capsicum
3 beef stock cubes
1 can diced tomatoes (400g tin)
1 can chickpeas
3/4 cup noodles (shells, spirals, bowties)
2/3 small can tomato paste (170gm tin)
herbs and salt pepper to taste (I used about 2tsp of each of the following: dill tips, Cajun seasoning and paprika and rubbed oregano, but usually use whatever i can find in the cupboard to make it taste nice :))


1. Peel and finely chop all the vegetables and set them aside.
2. Roll the mince into small balls (roughly a teaspoon of 20-50c piece)
3. Turn on a large pan with a small amount of oil, and wait until the pan starts to smoke lightly.
4. Place meatballs in the pan and seal off
5. Once meatballs are browned all on the outside place onto a plate (they will cook further when put back in the pan, so don't worry about them cooking all the way through)
6. Put all the vegetables into the pan with tomato paste and sauté until vegetables start to go tender and add the herbs and spices
7. Mix stock cubes with about 50ml of hot water until they are dissolved
8. Add stock cubes and can of diced tomatoes, and 3.5 cans of water with vegetables
9. Add noodles and chickpeas.
10. Bring to the boil, then high simmer for roughly 10 minutes, or until potato is cooked.

Yum! I'm trying this one this week. :)

I made this two nights ago! Thanks for the idea... It was awesome :D