Fagioli Soup

Italian Pasta Fagioli Soup
3 stars

It's a cold, wet, snowy day here - yes, snow in October! - so I wanted to warm the family up with some soup. I had all most of the ingredients for fagioli and wanted to give it a try.  This recipe claims to be as good as Olive Garden's soup.

Fagioli is a wonderful beef based Italian soup. There are quite a few variations; my favorite had sweet Italian sausage crumbles and barley in it.  I had high hopes for this recipe but I had my doubts when it called for 'one jar of spaghetti sauce.'   Um. Okay.

For the most part, I followed the recipe. Here's what I changed:

- I thought I had penne pasta. I didn't. I had to substitute half a bag of egg noodles.
- I ended up needing to add three or four more cans of beef broth to keep it from becoming too thick.
- I finely cut up stewing beef instead of using ground beef.
- I sauteed the beef in about two teaspoons of minced garlic. Mmmm garlic.  Let's stop for a moment and ponder the wonderfulness of garlic. Mmmmmm.
- I didn't have kidney beans or carrots so I ignored that part.
- In addition to the egg noodles, I added 1 cup of uncooked quick barley to the soup and let it come to a boil.

It's not a bad soup but it tastes like spaghetti sauce. Hrm. Wonder why.

I'll keep looking for a better recipe. This one isn't bad, it just wasn't what I was hoping it would be.

- Sharon