by Donald Hancock

Created on: October 06, 2009

Recipes: Italian vegetable soup with dumplings

If you are like me you like soup all year around, home made soup! And when the weather begins to get cool in October, I begin to keep home made soup in the refrigerator non stop. When we are down to enough for one more lunch, I put the pot on the stove to make more.

We enjoy variety, so I usually try to create something a little different each time. That is how I came up with one of my favorite soups, Italian vegetable with dumplings.

Ingredients:

4 medium potatoes, chopped

About 12 to15 florets (about 1 crown) of fresh broccoli (frozen will also work well).

One onion, chopped

1 cup of carrots, chopped

1 or 2 small yellow squash, chopped

small can of nibblets corn

1 or 2 links of Italian sausage, chopped and sauteed

3 cups of water

1 cup of chicken stock

cup of sour cream

Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper to tasted

Drop dumplings as per recipe below

Combine first nine ingredients in large pot, bring to boil, then turn to simmer and allow to cook until potatoes are soft, about an hour if you have the time, 30 minutes at a little higher temperature. While this is cooking, get the sour cream out and prepare the dumplings (below).

Dumplings

Ingredients:

1 cup of all purpose flour

2 tsp. Baking powder

1/4 tsp. Salt

1/3 cup of milk

Combine dry ingredients in bowl and add milk until dough will form a stiff ball when picked up in a tablespoon. Use a fork or second spoon to rake it from spoon into soup.

When soup has cooked long enough, add the sour cream and seasonings to taste. I usually add a little of each, taste, and add some more until it is right.

Bring soup to a rapid boil, turn down to simmer, and drop walnut size dumplings onto the top of the soup and cover for several minutes. Remove the cover, turn each dumpling over with fork or spoon, then cover and cook the other side of the dumplings for several minutes or until you are ready to serve.

It is delicious for lunch or supper on a cool fall or winter day. Add crackers or you might just settle for the dumplings!

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