Pasta e Fagioli - my version

I saw Rachael Ray make this Italian soup on her program and it looked soooo goood! My boyfriend likes it... so ...since we were snowbound last night, I made some.

I used little whole wheat macaroni elbows for the pasta. The recipe called for mini pork meatballs flavored like sweet Italian sausage. But I don't really like fennel seed (and I didn't want to buy a jar) and the ground pork looked too fatty to me, so I bought ground turkey and seasoned it with an Italian herb blend. Man oh man did this taste good!! It's dinner tonight along with a nice green salad.

Anybody want the recipe I can put a link here and then explain what I did differently. It's a terrific one-pot dish.

AB

Originally Posted by Bella713

I saw her make that on her show the other day, my Mom always made it but didn't put meat in it, but I only ate the macaroni out of it

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Helen, I have to tell you that it turned out really well. I think dishes like this were created b/c people couldn't afford meat. The meatballs cooked in the broth - en brodo, right? Which is another reason I didn't buy the pork... I didn't want all that rendering in my soup.

I made a Pittsburgh Wedding soup recipe before Christmas-it was a Cook's Country recipe which called for making mini meatballs and cooking them in the broth which I did and there isn't really much fat released into the broth-I used as the meat base a meatloaf mix that one of the local grocery stores makes. The fat does add a bit of flavour to the soup.