Mexican Meatball Soup

This stuff is seriously good. Not just because it's a way to get humongous amounts of sour cream in to you, but it's got all sorts of good taste sensations...

Man I love this soup!

Meatballs:

500g mince

60g grated cheese

40g breadcrumbs*

2 eggs

1 clove garlic

1 small handful of coriander, roughly chopped

2 tablespoons lime juice

3 teaspoons ground chilli (or to taste... the original recipe said 1/2 a teaspoon)

1 teaspoon ground oregano

1 teaspoon ground cumin

Soup:

Olive oil, for frying

1 onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 jar of salsa (I like the doritos hot salsa)

400g tin of tomatoes

1L beef stock

400g tin red kidney beans (I use the Coles home brand mexican beans, actually)

1 small handful of coriander

Sour cream (lashings of it!), grated cheese and corn chips to serve.

Preheat oven to about 180C.

Mix all the meatball ingredients together. Roll them in to small(ish) balls - probably a little over a tablespoon of mixture/meatball - and line them on an oven tray. If this is one you also use for cookies, line it with oven paper first, much easier to clean. In fact, line it with oven paper anyway, it's easier.

Put meatballs in oven.

Heat up frypan/oil.

Drain and rinse kidney beans (ignore this step if using mexican beans)

Fry onions until softened - about 5 minutes? Add garlic and cumin, stir for another minute. Add in salsa, tomatoes, beef stock, and kidney beans (if using mexican beans, just tip the whole tin in!).

Bring to the boil & simmer for about 15 mins.

At this point the meatballs have been in for 15-20 mins, which is perfect.

Tip in the meatballs, add in the coriander, bring it back to the boil, simmer for about 5 minutes more.

Serve with MASSIVE amounts of sour cream (unless you don't have an addiction to sour cream, in which case, serve with sane amounts..), corn chips and cheese.

It reheats really well, too.

You can try eating it for breakfast, but just one word of warning - I had this for breakfast, lunch, and dinner one day. Put me off eating it again for a whole week. Don't say you weren't warned.

*Have I mentioned garlic breadcrumbs before? If not, here it is. I love garlic bread. Adore it. And I can never eat all of it. So the leftovers go in the freezer, and when I need breadcrumbs, I just put some in the blender. Extra garlic never hurt anyone that wasn't a vampire.