Homemade Dumpling Soup with Vegetable Broth

Name: Homemade Dumpling Soup with Vegetable Broth
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 45 min
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Homemade dumplings 20-25; Carrot 2; Onion 1; Potato 1-2; Hot pepper (optional) 1; Garlic 2-3 cloves; Celery root 1 piece; Dill, parsley 2-3 sprigs; Salt, black pepper, coriander to taste

If you make pelmeni (dumplings) at home and always have some in the freezer, I recommend treating yourself to a tasty dumpling soup now and then. It is an easy first course that can happily double as breakfast, especially when you have no time to cook. All it takes is a quick vegetable broth, dumplings boiled in it and some fresh herbs, and breakfast is ready.

Homemade dumplings are not hard to make. The filling is usually no trouble: minced pork and beef, often with some poultry, game or other exotic meat added. Raw onion usually goes into the filling, less often garlic, herbs and spices. Many people find the dough harder, both making it and rolling it out. The dough can be anything from the simplest flour and egg to quite elaborate recipes. What matters is that the wrapper is very thin and does not tear while cooking.

If you have a pasta machine at home, the kind used for lasagne and fettuccine, rolling out the dough is no trouble at all. Besides making spaghetti with cheese for breakfast easy, it makes preparing dough for ravioli or dumplings child's play. Frozen, filled dumplings keep for a long time and get eaten quickly. You can simply boil 20-25 for breakfast, or make a vegetable soup with dumplings.

As an acquaintance of mine used to say, dumplings taste an order of magnitude better when cooked not in water or steamed, but in broth, that is, in a dumpling soup. The ultimate touch is dumpling soup in a ceramic pot, baked in a stove or oven with a rich broth and herbs, if you have the time, of course. Still, most of the work in this soup is making the broth.

Homemade dumpling soup with ordinary vegetables that every fridge has is a real lifesaver, especially when there is no time for long-cooked meat soups like borscht or meat soup.

If you make the dumplings ahead and freeze them, the soup takes little longer than the broth itself, since cooking frozen filling in a dough wrapper takes just a few minutes. To make the soup a little thicker, at the very end we add potato that was boiled in the broth and mashed, just as we do for vegetable soup or potato soup with cracklings.

More with carrots

Carrot SoupThick, fragrant carrot soup puree with ginger and lemon zest, made without oil. Step-by-step recipe with photos, plus a note on Moro carrot soup.

Carrot PattiesHomemade carrot patties: carrots stewed in milk, bound with semolina and yolks, breaded and fried golden. Easy to make vegetarian, served with sour cream sauce.

Braised Onions with CarrotsBraised onions and carrots with tomato paste: a simple, cheap vegetable side ready in under an hour. Serve with meat, fish or mashed potatoes, or as a sauce.

Pan-Fried Vegetables: Carrots, Peppers and Young EggplantPan-fried vegetables in one skillet: carrots, parsnip, bell and hot peppers, celery and young eggplant, fried in stages for a quick side dish for meat or fish.

Braised Beef with Onions and Carrots: Chuck with VegetablesBraised beef with whole small onions and chunky carrots: beef chuck slowly simmered in a pan until fork-tender. A simple home-style recipe with photos.

Ingredients

2 servings

Homemade dumplings 20-25
Carrot 2
Onion 1
Potato 1-2
Hot pepper (optional) 1
Garlic 2-3 cloves
Celery root 1 piece
Dill, parsley 2-3 sprigs
Salt, black pepper, coriander to taste

Step-by-step recipe

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First you need to make the vegetable broth in which the dumplings will cook. For the broth you only need ordinary vegetables found in any fridge: carrot, onion and soup roots such as celery, parsnip and parsley, whatever you have. To flavor the broth, you can add a few unpeeled garlic cloves and a fresh hot pepper. To make the soup a little thicker, boil a whole potato in the broth and mash it at the end to add to the soup. For serving, prepare a little fresh dill and parsley.
Pour 5-6 cups of water into a pot. Add a whole peeled potato, unpeeled garlic cloves and the soup roots in large pieces. Peel the onion, cut a cross in it and add it to the water. Remove the seeds and white membranes from the hot pepper and chop it with a knife. Peel the carrot and cut it into thick matchsticks. Season the broth with a little salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and simmer over low heat, covered, for 30-35 mins.
When the vegetables in the broth are cooked, take out the potato and set it aside to cool a little. The overcooked onion and soup roots can be thrown away. The garlic can either stay in the soup or be discarded, as you like. Taste the broth and add more salt and pepper if needed, plus a pinch of ground coriander. When the broth is boiling well, take the dumplings you prepared earlier from the freezer.
Drop the frozen dumplings into the boiling broth. For obvious reasons, the boiling stops at once. It is important not to let the dumplings stick to the bottom of the pot. Stir the soup gently, preferably with a wooden spatula rather than a spoon, so you are less likely to damage the dough wrappers. After a few minutes the dumplings will float up and the soup will start to boil again.
Dumplings usually cook for 5-7 minutes from the moment they float up. In soup you can cook them a little longer, and 10 minutes is enough. While the soup is boiling, make a thin purée from the potato you set aside. You can mash the potato with a fork or purée it in a blender. Then add a ladle of broth to the mashed potato so that the purée is very thin.
Stirring the dumpling soup, pour in the thinned potato purée in a thin stream. Cook for 1-2 minutes from the moment it starts to boil, then take it off the heat right away. The soup is ready and can be served for lunch. Pick the leaves off the herb sprigs and chop them with a knife. Ladle the soup into bowls, dividing the homemade dumplings equally. Sprinkle the soup with herbs.
Serve the dumpling soup right away, while it is very hot. As it cools, the dumplings lose some of their flavor. It is also best not to reheat the soup. If you like it spicy, you can add black pepper or hot pepper. I, for one, like my first courses noticeably spicy. I also prefer the soup in a small bowl or a deep plate, for the visual effect of lots of dumplings in the soup, but that is a matter of personal taste.
You can serve the dumpling and vegetable soup with white bread or toasted garlic croutons. It is especially good if the croutons are spread with chicken liver pâté.