Filipino Whole30 Eats: Bola Bola

Still recovering from a cold, I seem to be in a soup kind of mood nowadays. (It’s also been the weather for it.) So I thought I’d try to make Whole30 compliant an old family dish: meatball soup. Versions of this go by a number of names: misua soup, almondigas, bola bola sopas. We just called it bola bola and slurped away.

Translations
Bola bola (Boh-lah boh-lah): meatballs, or any of several dishes featuring meatballs
Misua (Miss-wah): Chinese vermicelli
Sopas (Soh-pahs): soup

Ingredients

• 1 lb. ground pork
• 1 beaten egg
• 1/4 cup minced onions
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon tapioca starch
• 4 cups chicken stock
• 1 large cucumber, peeled, de-seeded, and cut into roughly 1-inch wide by 2-inch long pieces
• 2 cups cooked spaghetti squash

Instructions

1. Mix the ground pork, egg, onions, salt and pepper, and tapioca starch in a bowl. Pinch off and roll pieces of the meat mixture into balls. Size can be 1 to 2 inches, your call.
2. Bring the chicken stock to a boil in a large pot. Place the meatballs in the chicken stock, cover, lower the heat, and simmer for 25 minutes.
3. Add the cucumber pieces and spaghetti squash. Turn off the heat and let the pot sit for about five minutes, letting the residual heat soften the cucumber. Transfer the soup into bowls and serve hot.

Makes about 3 servings. Serve with coconut aminos (soy sauce substitute) in small bowls as seasoning.

How this is Whole30

I used tapioca starch instead of corn starch as the binder. More importantly, I took out the misua or Chinese vermicelli (made of wheat) from the recipe and replaced it with spaghetti squash.

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