Italian Wedding Soup
Italian Wedding Soup is one of my all-time favorite soups, but I never make it because the recipe was always so time consuming, until now! A while back I picked up an Eating Well magazine title Soups: Comforting Meals to Make and Share. One of the recipes in the publication was Italian Wedding Soup (page 82). So, this last weekend I gave it a go and it was wonderful and super simple to make! What made it easy was instead of making the meatballs from scratch it used frozen meatballs. This key point is what has always stopped me from making this incredibly tasty soup – the meatballs take forever to make and then you had to make the soup on top of that… not with this recipe!
Ingredients:
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
1 1/3 cups of chopped yellow onion
2/3 cup chopped carrots (about 4 carrots)
2/3 cup of chopped celery (about 2 stalks)
2 tablespoons minced garlic
6 cups unsalted chicken broth
6 oz orzo (the recipe notes preferably whole wheat, but I just used what I could find in the store)
1 ½ tablespoons chopped fresh oregano (I couldn’t find fresh, so I used dried and eyeballed it)
½ teaspoon Kosher salt
24 cooked chicken meatballs (12 oz) – here too I couldn’t find chicken, so I substituted a beef and pork combination and added a few extra meatballs, just because meatballs are yummy
4 cups of baby spinach (I took the stems off)
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
Directions:
Active: 20 minutes Total: 20 minutes
Serves 6 1 ½ cups each
Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add onion, carrot, celery and garlic; cook, stirring occasionally until the onions are translucent, 4 to 5 minutes – be careful not to burn the garlic. Next add the broth, cover, and bring to a boil. Add orzo, oregano, and salt; cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until the orzo is tender, about 9 minutes.
Another nice thing about this recipe is that it doesn’t use so much pasta that the broth gets completely absorbed! Once the pasta is tender, stir in the meatballs and spinach and cook until the meatballs are heated through and the spinach is wilted, 2 to 4 minutes. The next time I make this soup I think I will experiment with baking the meatballs first to see if I can get a crispy crust on them before they go into the soup – yes it will add a little time to the recipe but I’m curious to see if it will taste even more delicious!
To serve, ladle out the soup, drizzle with the remaining olive oil and sprinkle the Parmesan cheese on top. I included a sliced baguette to dip in the broth. Super yummy and crazy easy, and definitely a good go-to comfort meal for a chilly winter’s evening.
Bon Appetit!
