Rainy, Cool, Fall Days

Perfect weather for soup. We are putting a half steer and a half hog in our freezer, so we've been making room. My wife roasted a turkey Sunday evening for supper, then made broth from the carcass.

She emailed me a little bit ago and said she had to go to a meeting, this morning, and got cold and damp. She'll be home for dinner, so I whipped up one of our favorites.

Old family recipe...... Rivel soup:



I can't wait for her to get home, it smells too good to wait on her.

Anybody else have a cold, rainy day favorite??

Tim

Looks good Tim--how are the piggies and hens?? Did you harvest some beans?

Geo

FP,

I did a little reading to learn this is Amish comfort food. The rivals are the dumplings, which seem to suggest spaetzle to me, do you agree?

At several state fairs, we have had rival soup entries. I haven't made any yet, though I am looking forward to it.

What do you know about this soup?

Regards,

Geo wrote:........how are the piggies and hens?? Did you harvest some beans?

Hey Geo,

The pigs have all moved to the freezer, I think we'll be putting more in, in a couple of weeks. Hens are still growing, we hope to be getting eggs in another 6 weeks. No bean harvest yet. There are a few fields being harvested, they are actually running pretty good, from what I've been hearing.

Cathy2 wrote:....Amish comfort food. The rivals are the dumplings, which seem to suggest spaetzle to me, do you agree?.....

Yes, I think it's a regular thing on Amish tables. I've never had spaetzle, but I saw them making it on Food Network and it's pretty much the same. I think they run spaetzle through a grater to get rice size pieces, rivels are torn off for bigger chunks, about the size of a pencil eraser up to the size of your little finger tip.

Cathy2 wrote:......What do you know about this soup?.......

All I know is I've been eating it since I was a kid, on both sides of my family. The recipe is stupid simple.

Mix an egg into a half cup of flour and a couple big pinches of salt with a fork, roll it onto the counter dusted with flour and keep kneading and adding flour until it won't take any more (about another half cup). Divide the dough into 3 or four pieces and tear little pices into the boiling soup stock.

Stir occasionally to keep them seperated.

As the steam rises, the dough in your hand will get sticky, roll it in the flour some more and keep tearing and adding pieces. When it's all in the soup, I usually sweep up the extra flour on the counter top and add it to the soup, it's usually not more than a teaspoon or two of dust and crumbs. Boil as long as you like but 5 or 10 minutes is enough.

When my wife learned to make it, she fooled around with rolling it out and cutting it with a pizza cutter. It tasted the same, but there is something wrong with eating uniform rivels in your soup..... she has since come around to the old tried and true. Most of the time, I'm the one that makes this dish, although she sometimes get's the stock ready and calls me to make the rivels.

Give it a shot, it's a pretty hearty dish that's really fast and easy to make. We make and can our own turkey & chicken broth here, but we've used Swanson broth at my in laws, it's almost as good. Most of the flavors come from the onions, carrots, garlic & herbs anyhow.

Let me know if you make it, how it turned out and how you liked it.

Tim

Hi,

Thank you so much for the added details.

My Oma, before she had a spaetzle press, would have the dough on a cutting board. She would use a knife to cut off pieces into the pot.

The dough I use for spaetzle is 1 1/2 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 cup water and two eggs.

I will surely be making Rival soup this winter and will advise on my efforts. Is it broth and rivals only or do you add some poultry meat and vegetables?

If you scan down these pages, you will find potato soup with rivels from Illinois and Minnesota.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:...... Is it broth and rivals only or do you add some poultry meat and vegetables?

I forgot about the water, I put just a splash in, probably a teaspoon or two, it's OK if you forget though.

We use meat in our rivel soup if we have leftovers. Otherwise not. It's usually got carrots, celery, onions, garlic, rosemay, sage and pepper in it. It's never exactly the same twice, if we happen to be out of an ingredient, it just gets omitted.

You can use your favorite noodle soup recipe and just use rivels instead of noodles (as long as that recipe doesn't include emptying an envelope into a cup and adding boiling water). I'm pretty sure that's not what everybody is about on LTH though. I've always wanted to try it with a beef based soup, but I never have....... maybe this winter when we get snowed in.

Tim