Matzo Ball Soup

My own recipe

Ingredients

• 1/2c matzo meal
  
• 2 eggs
  
• 2 tbsp olive oil
  
• 1/2c fresh parsley, finely chopped (or maybe 1/4c dried?)
  
• salt and pepper (but mainly pepper)
  
• ~6c chicken or vegetable stock
  
• Whatever vegetables you think go in soup (I tend to use carrots and peas)
  
• 2 chicken breasts, cut into smallish strips or chunks (optional)
  

First, prepare the matzo balls. In a bowl, combine the matzo meal, the eggs, the oil, the parsley, and add a liberal amount of salt and pepper. Now you have to add some water to this mixture so that it will loosen up. ~2tbsp minimum. The more water you add now the fluffier the matzo balls will be later. This is a personal preference thing. Some people like them more compact. You pick. Anyway, once you've mixed up the matzo ball batter, put it in the fridge.

Now, bring the stock to a boil. Add the vegetables and, if you're using it, the chicken. By now, the matzo ball batter should be nicely chilled. Get it out and spoon it into the boiling mixture. I use a small ice-cream scoop with a quick-release, though you could use two normal spoons if you're good. Once you've spooned in all of the matzo balls, turn the soup down to a simmer and cover. This prevents them from drying out on top.

After five minutes, you can check on them. I couldn't tell you when they're done, I just keep looking until they look right. They don't take very long, but also you can pretty much over-cook them as long as you want and nothing too bad will happen. At some point they'll start to fall apart.

Thoughts: I've made this a lot. One thing you can do is add cayenne pepper, paprika, or, hell, I dunno, curry to the matzo balls. Go crazy. One time we put peas in the matzo ball batter itself. I didn't really like that. Anyway, there are a lot of options if you aren't excited about just parsley. Still, this recipe is hard to screw up and if you keep a thing of matzo meal on hand you'll pretty much always have the ingredients you need.

Disaster Index: 1/10 - it's kind of a standard at this point.