Meatball Soup

This Meatball Soup recipe (Ciorba de Perisoare) is a classic Romanian soup made with turkey meatballs, vegetables, and a sour broth. It’s a hearty and delicious turkey meatball soup that’s best served with a loaf of crusty bread.

 

Estimated reading time: 13 minutes

Every now and then there’s a dish or recipe that makes its way into your family and it becomes iconic – you find yourself making it over and over again because your family members just can’t get enough. For The Busy Baker family, this Meatball Soup recipe, or Ciorba de Perisoare as it’s called in Romania, is just that.

This meatball soup has become one of our family’s favourite meals – we love it so much that it makes its way onto our dinner table at least twice a month and we’ve started keeping a big batch of the meatballs in the freezer so we can whip up a quick pot on a busy weeknight.

Our kids beg for it, they lick out their bowls and ask for seconds (and thirds and fourths!), and it’s a recipe we share with everyone we know because it’s just THAT good. Trust us, you’re going to love it too!

Ciorba is the Romanian word for soup made with a sour broth and Perisoare are meatballs – hence, the name Meatball Soup! It’s a traditional Romanian soup served all over the country and loved by Romanian families everywhere. You can find it in restaurants all throughout Romania and although everyone makes it just a little bit differently, it’s always packed with vegetables, flavoured with a sour broth, and made with deliciously tender meatballs.

Ciorba de Perisoare is traditionally served with a handful of fresh parsley on top and a big dollop of high-fat sour cream. It’s truly a delicious and healthy soup that makes a great starter or a wholesome meal all on its own – with a few slices of crusty bread for dipping, of course!

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Want to make the PERFECT turkey meatball soup recipe? Here’s a list of our best pro tips and tricks for the perfect meatball soup!

We recommend mixing together the ingredients for the meatballs and set it aside. This will help the flavours develop in the meat mixture.

Fresh veggies are superior to frozen ones in this recipe, although frozen veggies will work in a pinch. Chopping the veggies fresh gives the soup so much flavour.

A lot of this soup’s flavour develops as the veggies soften in the pan. They begin to caramelize and give the soup a delicious taste.

Herbs and spices are the key to a flavourful meatball soup. We love including thyme, oregano, paprika and other herbs and spices to make this soup taste amazing.

Adding vinegar to this soup makes it taste very authentic and it gives a delicious slightly sour taste. Add just a little bit, taste the soup, and add more if you want. You can always add more but you can’t remove it, so add a little bit at a time.

Throw a handful of chopped parsley into the soup right before serving and serve with fresh sour cream.

Making homemade turkey meatball soup is a simple process, but here’s a list of some possible problems you might encounter and how to fix them:

If your meatballs fall apart in the soup it’s likely because they don’t contain enough binder. To prevent this, form one meatball and boil it by itself in the soup. If it holds together, the rest will too. If it doesn’t, add an egg yolk to the meatball mixture and roll the meatballs.

Use fine breadcrumbs, not coarse ones, or the meatball mixture might be too dry. Be sure to measure your breadcrumbs correctly. If the meatballs are too dry, add one more egg to the meatball mixture.

Be sure to sauté the veggies over medium heat or lower to prevent burning. If the vegetables begin to burn, turn down the heat and cook on the lowest heat setting.

If the soup is too thick, simply add some more liquid to thin it out.

In this case, add a little more salt, more herbs, and you can even add more tomato paste for extra flavour.

If the soup is too salty simply dilute it with unsalted liquid. You could also slice a potato in 4 pieces and add it to the soup as it boils. The potato will soak up the salt and can be removed before serving.

Adding a pinch or two of sugar is a great way to reduce the acidic taste created by the tomatoes in the soup.

Here’s the basic kitchen equipment you’ll want to have on hand to make this delicious turkey meatball soup recipe (paid links):

• Large Soup Pot or Dutch Oven Pot
• knife
• chopping board
• measuring cups and spoons
• liquid measuring cups
• mixing bowls
• wooden cooking utensil
• Soup Ladle
• cookie scoop for forming the meatballs

Here’s a list of the ingredients you’ll need to make this delicious Ciorba de Perisoare (paid links):

Ingredients for the Meatballs

• 1 pound ground turkey or use ground chicken
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup breadcrumbs or 1/2 cup semolina flour
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme or the leaves of 4-5 sprigs of fresh thyme
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 2 teaspoons fresh parsley finely chopped
• 2 teaspoons tomato paste
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper

Ingredients for the Soup

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 onions diced
• 3 carrots diced
• 2 ribs of celery chopped
• 1 cup celeriac chopped (if you can’t find celeriac where you live, use parsnips instead)
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 2 teaspoons dried thyme or a couple sprigs of fresh thyme
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 3 dry bay leaves
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 2 teaspoons garlic powder
• 3 tablespoons tomato paste
• 30 ounces canned diced tomatoes two 15 ounce cans
• 10 cups chicken stock
• 1-2 teaspoons salt depending on the chicken stock
• 1-2 tablespoons white vinegar or use white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar
• 1 handful fresh parsley

Make this recipe your own by trying one of these delicious variations on the classic meatball soup recipe!

1. Plant-Based: Replace traditional meatballs with plant-based meat alternatives (Beyond Meat works really well in this recipe!). Use vegetable broth instead of chicken broth to keep it entirely plant-based.
2. Spicy: Add a spicy kick to the soup by incorporating red chili peppers into the meatballs or by adding a generous amount of chili flakes or hot paprika to the broth. This variation is great for those who enjoy a bit of heat.
3. Creamy: After the soup is fully cooked, stir in sour cream or heavy cream, creating a creamier texture and a richer flavour.
4. Slow Cooker: Make the recipe as a slow cooker soup by allowing it to cook in the slow cooker for 6-7 hours on low or 3-4 hours on high.
5. Low-Carb: Make a low-carb version by reducing or eliminating the breadcrumbs from the meatballs (or replacing them with almond flour) and focusing on high-protein ingredients.

Here are some delicious sides and other dishes we recommend serving with this turkey meatball soup recipe!

• Easy Homemade French Bread
• Quick No Knead Bread
• No Knead Jalapeno Cheese Artisan Bread
• Easy Tomato Salad
• Easy Potato Salad
• Braised Beef and Mushrooms with Polenta

All over Romania you’ll find different versions of almost every traditional recipe. As is true with almost every culture, cultural dishes have variations based on the different regions of the country, what ingredients were historically available during different periods of time, during which season the dish is being made, and of course, based on the preferences or traditions of a particular family or even a village.

Traditional or “authentic” Romanian Ciorba de Perisoare is made differently depending on where in Romania you go, but here are some ways you can make our recipe even more authentic and traditional, if you choose:

1. This soup is traditionally made with pork and rice meatballs. If you wish to make the more traditional version of the meatballs, sauté a small onion with 1/4 cup uncooked rice and add it to the meat mixture instead of the breadcrumbs or semolina. 
2. This soup is sometimes made with a homemade tomato juice Romanians call “bulion”, which is more acidic than the store-bought canned tomatoes. For a more authentic taste we recommend adding the vinegar called for in the recipe for that sour, acidic taste.
3. This soup is sometimes made with a fermented broth made from grains called “bors” (pronounced borsh). It also gives the soup a sour flavour, so again – don’t skip the vinegar.
4. In summer it’s often made with fresh tomatoes and in the fall and winter it’s either made with canned tomatoes or without tomatoes at all (so the broth of the soup is more beige than red).
5. It’s almost always served with a big handful of fresh parsley thrown in at the end of cooking and a large dollop of high-fat sour cream, so be sure not to skip those ingredients!

We hope you love this meatball soup recipe as much as we do! Let us know in the comments below, what’s your favourite hearty soup recipe? We’d love to know!

• Minestrone Soup
• Roasted Vegetable Soup
• Beef Barley Soup with Kale
• Lasagna Soup
• Easy Instant Pot Chicken Noodle Soup
• Homemade Mushroom Soup
• Sweet Potato Soup
• Mexican Tortilla Soup
• Carrot Ginger Soup
• Vegetable Soup