Recently, I posted that Granny (my great grandmother) taught me to do several things. One of those is how to make her favorite soup. This soup has been passed down through the years. I really wanted to learn how to make it, so I went over for the day to watch/help her make the soup. This is one of those “all day” soups. She said there is no cheating allowed. This takes time to develop the flavors and bring everything together.
I will list the basic recipe at the bottom, but I am telling you that it won’t be the same. I have “watched” her make it several times now, but only helped her once. It took several practices to get it close to right. Now, I try to make it every year around her birthday. I think I have mastered the taste of her soup, but go about it a little differently. This has been trial and error through the years. Many of the ingredients are estimated. Granny didn’t measure very much. She used her hand and knew how much of each ingredient to put in based on how it fit in her hand. There is some give and take if the recipe isn’t working out.
Granny’s soup is German and comes from her German family. We grew up calling it “Mouldeschele”. After much research, the only thing close that I can find is “Moultaschen”. I can see where the “t” could have been pronounced as a “d” as it was passed down, and the “n” worked its way into the final “l” sound. Years of changing accents and maybe a little laziness with the word could have easily changed it. It is kind of how people from Baltimore have gone from saying “Bal-ti-more” to “Baw-di-mer”. Maybe just the process of saying it so many times that it just slangs the word.
The history of the soup has to do with it being “little mouth pockets”. You can read more here if you want more of the history. history of moultaschen (opens in a new tab) On another site, I read that it is basically any broth with any filled noodle. So, it can be highly personalized, or made differently each time you make it. At out house, we prefer the way that Granny made it. It is a comfort food.
Granny’s soup has a rich tomato beef broth, with shreds of beef short ribs, and the noodle encases a homemade meatball.
We typically double this recipe in a very large soup pot and it feeds the 7 of us for dinner with everyone eating 2nd bowls, and a good amount left over for lunch the next day.
Here is the single recipe:
Ingredients
Broth
1 pack of beef short ribs
1 1/2 onion (chopped small)
2 celery sticks (chopped small)
1/8 cup of Thyme
1/8 cup of parsley
4 – 8 oz cans of Tomato Sauce
4 beef bouillon
1/4 tsp pepper
Meatballs
1 1/2 lb ground beef
2 eggs
1 onion
1/8 tsp pepper
1/8 cup of parsley
Pasta
1/2 cup water
2 eggs
2 TBSP Olive Oil
1 tsp salt
3 1/3 cups of flour
Directions:
Broth
In your large soup pot, you want to add the beef short ribs, and add water to go about 3/4 up the pot.
Chop your onions and celery very small. I used a food processor. Granny did it manually. Add them to the soup.
Add the thyme, parsley, pepper, and tomato sauce.
Add the beef bouillons. This was not in Granny’s recipe. No matter how long I boiled the above (in roughly the same size pot), my broth never came out as rich as hers. Adding the bouillon seemed to give it the extra richness that it was missing.
Boil/simmer for at least 2 hours. I have boiled up to 5 hours and no noticeable difference, but keep adding water to keep enough above half the pot.
Meatballs
Mix together the eggs, onion, pepper and parsley. Then add to the ground beef. You need to work the “slime” into the meat evenly. Some online suggest using your stand mixer. I let the boys do this part. They do not mind getting messy. You want all the ground beef “strings” to be broken and have the meat more one glob. I know there are probably more technical terms, but I am not a pro…just a mom. We use a 1 inch cookie scoop for the meat balls.
Place the meatballs in the fridge for 2 hours (covered).
Then bake for 20-30 minutes, uncovered, on 350.
Pasta
Granny only used 4 eggs and flour, made a well and slowly incorporated the flour to make her dough. The flour amount could be different every time she made it, based on various factors.
This is another area that I cheat and receive the same results. It started with my bread maker and its pasta dough recipe. Then we started have more kids and others wanting to enjoy the soup too. So we moved back to making the dough by hand.
Basically the same concept as Granny, but I use a very large bowl, and put my flour in , making a well.
In a separate bowl, I mix the water, eggs, oil, and salt.
Then add the liquid to the center of the flour, slowly incorporating the flour. The dough should be smooth and a little sticky.
Roll out the dough into thin squares (cut into strips then squares).
Place a meatball into the square and pinch shut tight making a triangle or rectangle. Pull the corners together at the top. (I know that the picture is backwards, but I can’t figure out how to change it.)
Take the soup meat out of the broth. Remove the fat and bones.
Put the good meat back into the broth.
Here, I would suggest skimming some of the fat off of the top of the broth. (Not an easy job) You could wait until the soup is cold and it will form a layer of fat on top that you can lift off easily.
Bring the broth back to a boil, add the dough/meatballs.
Simmer for 1/2 hour.
Enjoy!
This soup is even better the 2nd day when all the flavors have soaked into the noodles and meat.
Be careful reheating. This is a heavy soup and can burn very easily in a pot on the stove. The best way that we have found is to cut it up and put it in the microwave for 2-3 minutes.