Italian Wedding Soup
I love Italian wedding soup – I will always try to order it if I see if on a menu. Something about the little meatballs in the chicken stock, the leafy green vegetable and a healthy dollop of grated parmesan cheese just really hits the spot.
There is a bevy of recipes available online, as you can imagine. Andreas did the initial search and printed out recipes from two well known TV chefs for me to choose from – Giada De Laurentiis and Ina Garten. Giada’s recipe called for an egg in the soup and I thought that would make it a bit thicker than I wanted it. Ina’s was interesting to me because she uses ground chicken and chicken sausage for the meatballs and I’m trying to cut down on our red meat intake. Ina’s recipe was the clear winner.
The soup base for this recipe is really easy and I loved that it had carrots and celery and called for spinach instead of escarole. I know that all of these changes prevent this from being traditional Italian wedding soup, but I was OK with that.
The meatballs were fun to make, but I think I made them a little too big and cooked them a little too long. I think I was supposed to use ground chicken (both thigh and breast meat), but Wh*le Foods only sells ground chicken breast. I think that’s why my cook time was too long. All that being said, they were still really tasty!
Once the meatballs were done, Andreas took over and did the chopping and prep for the soup.
I used pastina shaped pasta since that’s what I had. I was hoping my two-year old would eat the meatballs and the pasta, but it was not meant to be. Andreas and I, however, loved it! It makes a lot of soup, so we’ll be eating it for days. Well worth it though!
