This post may contain affiliate links. Read my disclosure policy.
I kept meaning to get Mom’s recipe for this wonderful and easy meatball soup. She’s been making it for years. Because I love the meatballs so much, we put lots of them in this soup (2 lbs!!). You could use 1 lb and adjust the seasoning accordingly, but why? WHY?!!
My Mama and I made this together in her kitchen. I love cooking with Mom. I always learn so much. Everyone loved this soup and there was less than half left after a few hours. I downed two bowls myself and my son loved it too. It’s a winner for sure!
Ingredients for Mom’s Meatball Soup:
7 cups water
8 cups low sodium chicken stock
2 tsp salt, plus more to taste
6-8 medium potatoes, cubed
3 medium carrots, thinly sliced
1/2 cup pasta (optional)
1/2 onion, finely diced
2 large sticks of celery, finely diced
3 Tbsp canola oil
1 large egg, lightly beaten (optional)
2 Tbsp Dill, fresh or frozen
Mrs. Dash
Freshly ground black pepper
Ingredients for the Meat Mix:
2 lbs ground pork
1 tsp Mrs. Dash original or Mrs. Dash garlic seasoning
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 tsp salt
1 large egg
1/2 onion, finely diced
How to Make the Best Meatball Soup:
1. Add water and broth to a large soup pot over high heat. Add 2 tsp salt and all of your chopped potatoes to the soup pot.
2. Bring to a boil and cook 10 minutes. In the mean time, slice your carrots and toss them into the soup pot.
3. Add 1/2 cup of 1/2″ pieces of thin spaghetti to the soup pot or whatever pasta you wish. Pasta is optional, but I’ve always liked it when Mom added it to soups.
4. Chop your onion (1/2 goes into the meat mix and 1/2 goes into the soup in step 7).
5. Place ground pork into a large bowl (Store-bought ground pork works. I ground my own pork on the large grinder holes). Add 1/2 chopped onion, 1 tsp Mrs. Dash, 1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper, 2 tsp salt, and 1 egg. Mix well.
6. Make meatballs by rolling them in your hands. They don’t have to be perfect, just round-ish. Toss them in your pot as you make them. Recruit a helper for meatballs to liven (and speed) things up. Cook for at least 10 minutes or until meatballs are cooked through and floating at the top.
7. Meanwhile, heat a non-stick skillet over medium/high heat. Add 3 Tbsp canola oil, finely diced celery and onion. I normally don’t like celery in soups, but sautéing enhances the soup’s flavor without being over-the-top celery flavored. Saute until soft and golden. Add it to the pot.
8. Add 1 beaten egg to the soup pot while stirring constantly so you don’t get clumps of egg. If you don’t like egg, you can omit it (the soup won’t miss it).
9. Add 2 Tbsp dill. Then add more Mrs. Dash, Salt and Pepper to taste (Mom added about 1/2 tsp dash, 1/2 tsp salt, and 1/4 tsp pepper at the end).
Mom's Meatball Soup Recipe

Ingredients
Soup Ingredients:
- 7 cups water
- 8 cups low-sodium chicken stock
- 2 tsp fine sea salt, plus more to taste
- 6-8 medium potatoes, cubed
- 3 medium carrots, thinly sliced
- 1/2 cup pasta, optional
- 1/2 onion, finely diced
- 2 large sticks of celery, finely diced
- 3 Tbsp canola oil
- 1 large egg, lightly beaten (optional)
- 2 Tbsp Dill, fresh or frozen
- Mrs. Dash
- Ground black pepper
Meat Mix Ingredients:
- 2 lbs ground pork
- 1 tsp Mrs. Dash
- 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
- 2 tsp fine sea salt
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 onion, finely diced
Instructions
- Add water and chicken stock to a large soup pot over high heat. Add 2 tsp salt and all of your chopped potatoes to the soup pot. Bring to a boil and cook 10 minutes.
- In the mean time, slice your carrots and toss them into the soup pot.
- Add 1/2 cup of 1/2" pieces of thin spaghetti to the soup pot or whatever pasta you wish.
- Place ground pork into a large bowl. Add 1/2 chopped onion, 1 tsp Mrs. Dash, 1/2 tsp ground black pepper, 2 tsp salt, and 1 egg. Mix well.
- Make meatballs by rolling them in your hands. Toss them in your pot as you make them. Cook for at least 10 minutes or until meatballs are cooked through and floating at the top.
- Meanwhile, heat a non-stick skillet over medium/high heat. Add 3 Tbsp canola oil, finely diced celery and 1/2 onion. Saute until soft and golden. Add it to the pot.
- Add 1 beaten egg to the soup pot while stirring constantly so you don't get clumps of egg. (Optional).
- Add 2 Tbsp dill. Then add more Mrs. Dash, salt and pepper to taste. We added about 1/2 tsp dash, 1/2 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper at the end).
Hi, Natasha. What I can use to substitute mrs. dash? I live in Asia country
Any all-purpose salt-free seasoning would work. Without knowing what you have available in your grocery stores, it’s difficult to recommend a specific product.
Hi Natasha, thanks for your reply!
So far I only found
MasterFoods All Purpose Seasoning in Tesco eshop here, but the ingredients looks much different with mrs. dash. Probably I will need to try searching for others when I go grocery shopping..
Also need to search for dill. hmm
Oh! By the way, I tried your Borscht soup few days ago, without Dill. Taste nice! Thanks
Have a good day!
Thay was a delicious winter soup. Followed the recipe exactly and wouldn’t change a thing.
This was one the the tastiest soups I ever made! Thank you so much! My family loved it! 🙂
I’m so glad to hear that your whole family loved it! Thank you for sharing that with me.
Thank you for this recipe. It was delicious! This is just like my granny made it, she also used to add celery to her soups!
I used beef instead of pork and it tasted great. This was a little taste of childhood for me!
Irina I’m so happy this soup brings back memories of your Granny’s cooking :). That’s so sweet.
Fantastic. Mum’s to far away to teach me these recipes so this site has provided me food to which my taste buds have missed for a long time. Will continue to use the recipes for a very long time !
I’m so glad you are enjoying the blog and that the food reminds you of your Mom’s cooking 🙂
This soup sooo good!!!! One of my favorite.
I’m so happy you like the recipe!
Dear Natasha, thank you for this recipe. My husband and I loooooved the soup. He even said that it’s better than how his mom makes it, which is always a compliment 🙂
I love getting comments like these :D. Thank you for the great review Rita and you are very welcome.
Hey Natasha, this soup looks so good. However I would like to try it with chicken tigh meat instead of pork. Do u think it will stay together or will it fall apart?
(my husband loves chicken tigh meat, not a big fan of pork) Thank you!
Yes you could totally use chicken thigh meat instead of pork. My mom has also used ground beef with mushrooms and it tasted great although the beef was a little bit dryer. I think the thigh I meat will be delicious.
Thank you:) I used the thighs and it was very good. Even I ate it too.(I’m not a big meat eater) thanks again!
I’m so happy you enjoyed it! Thanks so much for the great review 🙂
can never go wrong with mama’s frikadelki 🙂 love your website.
Very true! Thanks Angela 🙂
Очень вкусно получилось, спасибо Наташа!!!
Правда вместо пасты я использывала уже свареный рис который смешала с мясном, получился рисовомясные шарики
That sounds really really good with rice in the meatballs. I’ll have to try it! Thanks so much for sharing how you made it 🙂
I just made this for my family. I have been trying to make a different soup every couple of days so I decided to try this on for variety. I have never made this soup before, or anything that called for meatballs really lol, but it was so easy! I followed the recipe almost exactly except I used chicken instead of pork and the meatballs were light and wonderful. I also omitted the egg because I forgot about it. One more addition was one Knorr chicken bouillon cube for flavor. My whole family was crazy about it, and my four year old said “mama you are the best cooker ever!”. Will definitely make it again. Thanks!!!
What’s sweet comment from your 4 yr old! I’m so happy you all liked it 🙂
I made this soup with lamb meatballs! So far so good!
Oh that’s good to know! Thank you 🙂
Hello Natasha,
Is there any other way to grind the meat without a meat grinder? I don’t have one, but would love to make this soup.
I’ve seen it done in a food processor but you can totally use pre-ground meat 🙂
Is there any way you could tell me about how many calories are in a cup of this soup? Would be really neat if you provided nutritional information! 🙂
The resource I use is CalorieCount.com. Once you set up a free account, you can paste in entire recipes and get calorie counts and nutritional information. I’m hoping to go through some of the old recipes and do that, but it would take me countless hours. Maybe when I go flex at work ;). Anyway, I hope you find that resource helpful! 🙂
Hi Natasha-
Just want to thank you for such an easy to follow recipes on your blog. Everything I’ve made so far turned out great, except when I decided to make this soup the second time using beef and mushrooms instead of pork as you mentioned in the comments below…anyway, so this time with beef the soup came out very oily. I tried to spoon out some oil from top but it is still really really oily. Do you know what went wrong here? Also after sautéing onions, celery and mushrooms I was very careful not to dump the oil from the pan into the pot.
What cut of meat did you use? I wonder if it was the fat from the meat?
I just used regular ground beef I bought at Walmart. Also I usually use only olive oil for cooking/sautéing, but this time I used canola oil. So I’m not sure what caused the oiliness, but next time I guess I shouldn’t skimp out on good quality meat. Lesson learned :/
I’d recommend using a lean ground beef. Ground beef can be quite a bit oilier depending on the % fat.
This is definitely an interesting twist. I’m used to this soup with chicken, called soup with Frikadeli
We call them frikadelki too! 🙂 This is my favorite soup. Major comfort food 🙂
I made this soup today and it turned out delicious! I recently got married and I’ve been using your recipies almost every day and today my hubby said I should thank you! lol so yeah thank you so much for your blog, it’s really helpful:)
Awww that’s so sweet. Thanks for sharing that with me. I’m so glad you both like my recipes 🙂
Hi Natasha,
What did you use to cut your onion?
I finely diced it with a knife. Here’s a good tutorial that I posted not too long ago. https://natashaskitchen.com/2013/05/22/how-to-chop-an-onion-a-video-tutorial/
This is almost like “Italian wedding soup”.Instead use chicken broth, omit the egg and dill…Lots of small meatballs, that I fry up or bake in the oven before dropping into the broth. Better flavor to meatballs.
Use “orzso pasta” added the last 20 minutes…Too DIE for!
Freezes well….
I should try baking them one of these days! Do you mix anything special into the meatballs?
I did not expect this soup to taste this good! I ran out of Mrs. Dash & my meatballs were half pork, half beef but it was soooooo good! My 11 month old couldn’t stop eating! Hubby, 9 year old and 4 year old made the meatballs very tiny. Oh, and we skipped the pasta because we gluten-free. Delish! Thank you.
I love to make meatballs tiny too. I’m so glad your whole family enjoyed it. That’s what is great about this recipe is you can make little adjustments based on what you have on hand and it’s always super tasty! 🙂
Love this recipe! turned out so well!!
Yay!! I’m so glad 🙂