Italian Wedding Soup You Wish You Could Can
05 April, 2020
This is an original recipe that I hold near and dear to my heart. Italian wedding soup has been a favorite dish of mine throughout my life, and it has been there for me whenever I needed it for some comfort food. As a kid, I searched at every Italian restaurant we went to for it (surprisingly a lot of Italian restaurants do not serve it). There is something about the meatballs, the super small pasta balls, and a classic broth. So simple, but a burst of flavors and textures all in one soup! There always seem to be more attendees at Sunday Night dinners when it gets out that I am making this recipe (I measure that as success!)
First I am going to give you the ingredients before I get to the story (This always frustrates me when I am trying someone’s recipe, because I mainly need to see if I have the right ingredients before I get disappointed that I can’t make something). This recipe serves about 8-10 people.
INGREDIENTS
The Meatballs
3 lbs of Sweet Italian Sausage
2 cups of shredded Parmesan Cheese
3 eggs
1/2 Cup of chopped Italian parsley
1 cup of bread crumbs of your choosing
6 Chopped cloves of Garlic
2 Tablespoons of McCormick’s Mediterranean Sea Salt/Spice mix
The Soup
12 Cups of Water (Or 12 cups of chicken broth)
A jar of roasted chicken better than bouillon base
One large package of baby spinach
One diced yellow onion
6 cloves of chopped garlic
One half a box of Ancini di Pepe pasta
For Serving
One bag of ruffles potato chips
Or one loaf of garlic bread
Adjusting the ingredients
It is very rare that I already have all the ingredients for a recipe I want to try, so I usually google substitutes for ingredients that I am missing. This recipe is adaptable, and I am going to tell you some of the options you have for a couple of the ingredients. For the sausage, get adventurous and throw a package of spicy Italian sausage in substitute for the sweet. If you want to make a smaller portion use this rule: 1 egg per pound of sausage and 1 1/2 TSPs of better than bouillon chicken base per 4 cups of water. You can also use chicken broth or bone broth as a substitute for water. If you use bone broth, you may still want to use a teaspoon or two of better than bouillon for some extra flavor.
I am a “jar-lic girl” (I must have a large jar of chopped garlic in the fridge at all times), but for the meatballs I usually chop some fresh garlic. In the ingredients pictures, you can see my garlic chopper. This is one of the kitchen gadgets I love, but it can be a challenge to clean the square chopping plate. For the soup garlic, I usually just use a couple of tablespoons of jar-lic.
For the bread crumbs, I prefer to use Italian bread crumbs, but sometimes you run out, so you can also use panko bread crumbs or a gluten free option (Ian’s gluten free panko crumbs) that most specialty stores offer now. Also for the pasta, I couldn’t find it at the grocery store the first time, so I used couscous instead of the Anccini di Pepe, which worked out pretty well. For those allergic to gluten, there are some gluten free couscous’ out there (Redmill makes one, you’re welcome Heather!).
How did this recipe come to be?
Throughout middle school, high school, and college, I would religiously sit down and eat an afternoon snack of Campbell’s canned Italian wedding soup. I also had a secret ingredient that I added to the experience of my afternoon soup time (you need to adapt when the house is out of bread). Though we had no bread, we did have a bag of original ruffle potato chips (yes I know all of you are thinking I am crazy, but the combination of the crunch and salt in the chip with the soup was a marriage made in heaven). It was an addiction………. They had the recipe down, but one day, some crazy person at Campbells decided they wanted to mess with a good thing, and they changed the recipe!!!!!! I was lost……. my staple afternoon snack for the last 10 years had been decimated by a “good idea” in the Campbell’s test kitchen. The new recipe just wasn’t the same, I gave it a couple of chances, but the noodles weren’t the same and there was a completely different texture to the experience, so I had to give it up and find a new afternoon snack.
Making the Meatballs!
Italian wedding soup meatballs are traditionally small meatballs. I had done a lot of research on this front, and after making this recipe about 50 times, I have finally settled on the right ratio of ingredients to ensure the meatballs stay moist and flavorful throughout the cooking process. You can make the meatballs ahead and freeze them or put them in the fridge for a day or two, until you are ready to put them in the soup. I once froze these, and brought them to a camping trip in Wyoming, where I assembled the rest of the soup over the fire pit (to this day, I think this is the only reason my friend JK comes to Sunday night dinners, just so he can tell that story haha).
Before you start the meatballs, set the oven to Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
To assemble the meatballs, throw all of the ingredients into a large bowl. I always like to have a box of latex free gloves in the kitchen to handle meat. use your hands to mix everything together. Make sure you continue to scrape the bottom of the bowl to make sure you get all of the bread crumbs incorporated.
Once everything is incorporated, line a baking sheet with parchment paper, and shape the meatballs to about 1 inch diameter balls and place them on the tray. This recipe makes about three rounds of trays (I would always suggest having at least two baking sheets in the kitchen, and it really doesn’t add much to the storage requirements). I shape the first tray of meatballs, and start cooking them, then I work on the second tray, and by the time I am done with that the first tray will almost be done, so you can use the first tray for the third round.
Bake the meatballs for about 16-19 minutes, until the surface is light brown and the bottom of the meatball has a nice browning to it. Transfer the meatballs to a separate bowl lined with a few layers of paper towel (This will absorb the extra oils on the surface of the meatballs). You have to make sure to keep an eye on these babies, because people tend to steal them when you turn your back (I’m pointing fingers at my sister, Abigail, right now).
Now its time for the soup!
The meatballs are the hardest part of this recipe, so from here on it should be smooth sailing! Start with heating a tablespoon of olive oil in the pan. Once the oil is hot, add the chopped onion and garlic, and saute until the onions start to become brown and translucent. Add the water and bouillon to the pot and bring it to a simmer for about 15-20 minutes.
Next, add the meatballs to the broth. Your welcome to taste the broth, but it will feel like it will need more salt. Wait to add anything until the meatballs have spent some time cooking in the soup. The Italian sausage is naturally pretty salty from the fat in the meat, so you don’t want to add any seasoning until you taste how much the meat has seasoned the broth. Once the meatballs cook in the broth for about 10-15 minutes, taste the broth. You will most likely need to add 2-3 more tablespoons of the better than bouillon to get it to the desired flavor level. Let each tablespoon have a couple of minutes to incorporate flavor into the broth.
Once you have the broth flavoring you want, make sure you have the broth at a low boil, and then add the pasta. The pasta will take sometime between 9-11 minutes to cook, as long as the broth stays at that low boil point. Once the noodles have about three minutes left, slowly add the container of spinach into the soup until all of it is wilted into the soup. Once the noodles are about three times their normal size, they have reached the perfect point! Make sure you time it so that you are eating the soup within 15 minutes of the noodles cooking completion. These noodles will continue to absorb nearly all of the broth the longer they sit.
Once your ready to eat, serve the soup up in some bowls, and choose your weapon of choice to transport this yummy goodness into your mouth (I of course go with the potato chip, but garlic bread or a spoon would suffice). Add some grated Parmesan cheese on top for a nice garnish. Annika got her first experience with the perfect bite of this Italian wedding soup. I’ll let her decide for herself if she agrees with me! Enjoy this dish, and let me know if you figure out how to home can meat products, because if I could I would start my daily snack tradition up again if I could keep this baby in the pantry. Keep a box of chicken broth or bone broth in the fridge, so you can add some moisture back into the soup for leftovers!
