Listen, I get it. You may or may not be on board with chicken meatballs. But here I am telling you, you need these pesto chicken meatballs in a parmesan broth. It starts with easy homemade chicken meatballs. I flavor the ground chicken with pesto, garlic powder, poultry seasoning, but the theme here is basically stirring the ingredients in a bowl, making meatballs, and popping it in the oven. No chopping is required. But that’s not to say you can’t use store-bought turkey meatballs if you want to make this recipe in a pinch. Bake them the exact same way, and use them. The other star of this chicken meatball soup recipe? The parmesan broth. You know the waxy rind on the back of a block of parmesan? That thing. When you simmer the rind with homemade or store-bought chicken stock, it totally makes the best soup base. And before you know it, you’ve got a bowlful of tender meatballs, al dente pasta, bright greens, and a pesto parmesan broth that is seriously so good you’ll want to add parmesan rind to all your soups from here on out.
Ingredients for chicken meatball soup:
Ground Chicken: You could also use ground turkey for this recipe as well if you prefer. Other protein would also work for this recipe.Panko Breadcrumbs: Panko is used as a binding ingredient. It helps the meatballs hold their shape.Seasonings: You’ll want to use some poultry seasoning, garlic powder, red pepper flakes, and dried parsley. If you want to use fresh parsley, that will also work just fine! I wanted this soup recipe to be super pantry-friendly so I used dried parsley this time around.An egg: a beaten egg is added in with the other ingredients for the meatballs to help with binding.Parmesan Cheese: Grated parmesan cheese goes into the meatball recipe. I also like to hang on to the parmesan rind and toss it into the soup to give the broth a richer umami flavor.Olive oil: We’ll saute the onions in olive oil before we make the parmesan broth.Pesto: I use basil pesto for this recipe. You can use a store-bought or homemade pesto. If you use store-bought, I suggest getting the pesto that is usually kept in the refrigerated pasta section of the grocery store rather than the stuff that’s in jars in the tomato sauce aisle. The flavors and colors are so much better in refrigerated pesto.Onions: Diced onions sauteed in olive oil are the base of the chicken parmesan broth.Chicken Stock: You can use low sodium chicken broth but you may need to add additional salt towards the end. You can also use regular (not low sodium) if you prefer as we’re adding quite a bit of water. Totally your call here!Pasta: I like to use anellini (spaghettiOs pasta) for this recipe but I know it’s not available everywhere. Ditalini pasta is what I use in my homemade minestrone recipe and that would work well for this soup as well.Greens: I like to add in a handful of cleaned lacinato kale at the end. You can also use curly leaf kale, baby spinach, or other mixed greens as well.
How to make chicken meatball soup:
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poultry seasoning: my seasoning mix contained salt, so I didn’t add any additional salt to the meatballs. if yours doesn’t contain salt, you may want to add 3/4 teaspoon of kosher salt along with the other meatball ingredients.
