Matzo Ball Soup. The Miracle Cure.

Whenever someone in this house gets sick, it's time for soup.  Not sure what it is about a hearty chicken soup that makes flu germs flee like a politician from the truth, but it sure seems to do the trick.  Hell, sometimes I think my kids feign illness just so I'll make soup.  To heck with an apple, a bowl of hearty stock full of chicken, veggies and matzo balls will keep the doctor away, unless, of course, you know the doctor, and they know about your soup.  Then they'll never get out of your hair...

Hot bowl of magic right here.

If you've made the stock in advance, this soup is pretty much a matter of chopping everything up and dropping it in hot stock.  But there's still a step by step after the jump.  Just hit that 'Read more' button down there...

I felt like a basic soup this time, but don't limit yourself to the ingredients I have here.  Yellow squash is wonderful, as is rice, wild rice, pasta, turnips, chard, spinach, broccoli... I could go on and on...

Time: 45 minutes to an hour

Cost: $8 for a good sized pot

Difficulty: 2

An inside stock tip: Make it from scratch

One of the staple ingredients in the Sparks household is chicken stock.  We make it roughly every two weeks from our scraps, and it fuels things like rice, adds a base to soups and flavors simple recipes.  When a recipe here calls for stock, this is what we use... 

Chicken stock in 8 and 16oz jars ready to jazz up simple meals

Home made stock is so much better than the factory made stuff and it takes all of fifteen minutes of attention to make (While it does simmer for 2-3 hrs, you can be doing other things, so I don't count that time).   We can keep the sodium at nearly 0, and the flavor at 11.  Yes the flavor goes to 11. Seriously, from scraps to stock in about fifteen minutes of work.

Time: 15 min (2-3 hrs to simmer, but no attention really needed)

Cost: FREE!!!! It's made from scraps

Difficulty: 1 - They should change the phrase to 'Easy as Stock"