I made my grandma's green bean soup tonight, with my secret ingredient (potato flakes) for quick cooking. It's an easy, delicious summertime meal, and the fresh green bean flavor really shines. If you have green beans that are just a little bit too tough to just steam or saute', they'll be fine in the soup, just cut into smaller (1 inch-ish) pieces and simmer until tender.
Here's a link to the DG article with photos (useful if you've never made this kind of dumpling before).
Grandma's Green Bean & Potato Soup with Dumplings
This is a throw-it-together recipe. You can adjust the amount of broth, add more potato flakes if you want it thicker, put in more snap beans if you have them, or make another egg's worth of dumplings.
3 cups chicken broth
2 cups water
1/2 cup instant mashed potato flakes
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper, more to taste
1 quart fresh green beans, snapped into bite size pieces
4 eggs, well beaten with a splash of water (1-2 tsp)
6 Tablespoons grated parmesan cheese
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper or half-sharp paprika
Put the stock and water in a large pot over medium-high heat. Snap the beans while the broth heats up. Add the potato flakes and pepper. Stir occasionally as the potatoes dissolve. Add the prepared snap beans to the thickened soup base and continue simmering until the beans are crisp-tender.
Get your dumpling dough ready while beans are cooking. Beat the eggs in a separate dish. Mix dry ingredients and make a "well" in the center, then pour in the beaten eggs. Stir with a fork, just until all the flour is moistened. This is a lot like making muffins -- you don't want to over-stir or they won't be tender. The dough should pull away from the sides of the bowl to make a sticky lump, not so stiff that you could roll it out, maybe halfway between muffin batter and biscuit dough. (I used to say "consistency of library paste," but nobody knows what that is now.)
When the beans are nearly done, bring the soup to a low boil and add the dumplings. Two long-handled iced tea spoons work really well to make the dumplings, but any 2 spoons will work. Scoop up a little dough, maybe half a teaspoon, on one spoon and use the other spoon to scrape the dough off so it drops into the soup. Work quickly and/or turn down the heat while dropping dumpings so the first ones don't totally overcook. I scoop up a big spoonful of dough and use my second spoon to scrape off 3 or 4 little blobs. The dumplings get bigger as they cook. The last dumplings need about 2 minutes to cook through, so wait a minute before removing the pot from the heat.
Leftovers (if any) keep fine in the fridge and can be reheated in the microwave, although you may need to thin the broth with a little more water or milk. I've never tried freezing this soup, although I've frozen green beans in chicken broth and made soup from them later.
