Robin Pietsch’s Oma’s Carrot Soup with Meatballs

The fall weather descended on us right on schedule, a week before Volksfest. It’s meatball season! It’s soup season! Let’s get both parties started in the same pot!

Robin Pietsch is a fairly young chef from the Harz region of Germany, a foresty, mountainy place between Leipzig and Hannover that was part of East Germany when he was a child. He leads two restaurants with Michelin stars that I have never eaten at, and is a judge and coach on the ZDF cooking contest show Die Küchenschlacht, which we view regularly. This recipe is from his first cookbook, a collection of “everyday” regional/seasonal recipes he presented in MDR (tax-funded TV in Dresden), which I got out of the library.

This soup is from his grandmother Christa, and I have assumed it is representative of meals women in East Germany cooked for their families. There is not a lot of extra seasoning, just salt and pepper, bay leaves and parsley. Because of this, I chose to splurge on ground Strohschwein. The hogs live their whole lives in a bed of straw, and I think I can taste a difference in big cuts.

Every traditional German meatball recipe starts with “leftover bread roll from the day before” and I never have one because we don’t eat rolls very often, and it’s easy to buy only what we will eat fresh. I chose to substitute panko crumbs. It’s not “authentic” but it did the job.

Roll the meat mass into walnut-sized balls while you sautée the veggies.

The recipe calls for a “bunch” of carrots, and there is really no way to know how many carrots that is by weight or volume, so I just used all the carrots I had in the house. It was not enough. Similarly, “three potatoes” could be any amount, so I just used up all the ones I had. Curiously, no celery; all Bavarian soups start with a mirepoix because the celery roots can be stored with the onions and carrots all winter. Further research is indicated.

The liquid is a normal beef broth. That’s the taste of fall right there–beef broth and carrots. The balls are boiled in the soup for thirty minutes–very soft, easy clean-up.

The delightful kick in this soup is the “smoked sausage” garnish: this is a cuisine that understands the importance of adequate protein. I got a pair of Kabanos, smoky and highly spiced.

If that’s not your thing, it’s fine alone. You can see from this photo how many more carrots I have to use next time to call this a “carrot soup”…

Mr Radish thought the balls could have used more seasoning…maybe next time I use some celery salt or Worcestershire sauce. I suspect back in the day Oma Christa would have had a bottle of Würzsauce in her kitchen for bringing the umami–not the klassenfeindliche Maggi-Würze, of course, but a local brand.

Meatball season! Finally meatball season!! I hope you are all as excited as I am!