Celebrate Valentine’s Day With A Wedding Soup!

I love making food for my wife Alex, and she loves Italian Wedding Soup – so why not make it during Valentine’s Day week?

Italian Wedding Soup is named after the Italian phrase minestra maritata, which translates to “married soup”. It is not traditionally served at weddings, but rather refers to the perfect “marriage” of ingredients—specifically, the blending of leafy greens with savory meats (like pork, beef, and sausage) cooked together in a hearty broth. 

I found this terrific recipe online at “The Cozy Cook” – bravo to them, so let’s get cooking!

You make this in three stages: cooking the soup base, then cooking some meatballs to add to it, then adding fresh spinach and patina (or orzo)…here’s how easy it was:

Wedding Soup Base Ingredients:

1 yellow onion, diced

1 ¼ cups carrots, diced

2 celery ribs, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

8 cups chicken broth

2 teaspoons Italian seasoning

Add the onions, carrots, and celery and soften over medium heat for 6 minutes, until softened. Add a splash of olive oil during cooking if needed.

Add the garlic and Italian seasoning and cook for 1 minute.

Add the chicken broth and bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer while you take on the next part of the recipe:

Let’s Make The Mini-Meatballs!

I call them “mini” because the key to keep them smaller, so they have harmony with the rest of the ingredients.

½ lb. ground beef, 85% lean

½ lb. ground pork

1 egg, beaten

1/2 cup Italian breadcrumbs,

¼ cup Parmesan cheese, grated

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 cup white wine

1/3 cup fresh parsley, finely chopped

¾ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon pepper

Combine all in single bowl and have some fun making golf ball sized meatballs!

Once you have your mini-meat alls, time to do a bit of pre-cooking:

Heat olive oil in a large soup pot over medium-high heat.

Brown the meatballs in batches for about 2 minutes. The middle of the meatballs will finish cooking in the soup.

These are easy and fun to fry up, and they smell good too! Take a look:

Remove and set aside. In this photo below, the first batch on top are done, and the rest about to get cooked as well.

Next you want to cook some pastina or orzo!

¾ cup pasta, uncooked

Boil water, add salt and add the pasta: drain once cooked through and add the pasta to serving bowls. (Otherwise the pasta tends to absorb the broth during storage)

Next chop two cups of fresh spinach and stir into the soup – cooking until wilted, about 2 minutes.

Ladle the soup into serving bowls and garnish with freshly grated parmesan and sprinkle some parsley over the top and you are ready to serve…here’s a look at how it all came together:

I was very happy with the flavor of the soup: the broth was rich, and the mini-meatballs are indeed the perfect marriage – add the spinach and the bite of the parmesan cheese and it was a very nice balance of flavors.

We served some crusty bread with this and it was a complete meal: oh, and if you really love mini-meatballs, make some extra and upset the balance of flavors by adding more at the end…like I did!

I have been on a soup kick lately and it’s really turned out well – like this next soup that uses a unique ingredient – take a look:

I whisked eggs, lemon juice and a little olive oil together and slowly poured it in a vegetable soup – the result was delicious – creamy without cream!

See the entire recipe here:

I have also started to use more fresh peas in soup recipes, like this one:

Here is a recipe for a very healthy fresh pea soup!

And if you love chili but want to watch the calories, I’ve got you covered as well:

This recipe is packed with flavor but not calories – see it here:

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