This is a classic soup my mom always made for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. Sukkot is a fall holiday, where family meals are eaten in a well decorated hut (re: Christmas lights everywhere) with a roof made of  some sort of coniferous tree that also smells suspiciously like Christmas.  In Cleveland, eating outside in the fall months can be downright blustery, so a hot bowl of soup loaded with meatballs and thin vermicelli noodles floating in a delicious tomatoey-soy broth was the perfect antidote to freezing your butt off in the Christmas tree hut. Naturally, when the blizz hit this week, my first instinct was to make this festive and satisfying meatball soup. While there are some additional steps to this recipe, beyond just throwing everything in a pot, it’s easy enough to prepare and features simple ingredients that are probably in your pantry already.

Chinese Meatball Soup

1/2  cup chopped yellow onions

1/2 cup chopped scallions

2 cloves of garlic minced

2 tbsp oil

1 1/2 cups chopped fresh tomatoes

3 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsp sesame seeds

Pinch of cayenne

6 cups beef broth

1/4 lb thin noodles (vermicelli or angel hair)

Saute onions and garlic in oil until soft. Add tomatoes and cook for another 5 minutes over low heat. Add soy sauce, sesame seeds, cayenne and broth. Cover and simmer over low heat for an hour. Add meatballs (recipe below) to the broth and place cooked noodles in each bowl right before serving.

Meatballs 

1 lb ground beef

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

2 tsp sesame seeds

1/4 tsp ground ginger

Mix all ingredients together and form petite meatballs. Put them on a broiler pan and bake at 350 for 15 minutes. Add them right to the soup.

The key to non-soggy noodles is to put them in the bowl just before ladling on the broth.