How To Make The Best Italian Wedding Soup

Today we’re making Italian Wedding Soup with pork and beef meatballs. This is a recipe that always hits the spot! Enjoy!
WATCH OUR FOOD/COOKING PODCAST:
https://www.youtube.com/@sipandfeastpodcast

FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM:
https://www.instagram.com/sipandfeast/

SUPPORT ON PATREON:
https://www.patreon.com/sipandfeast

MY AMAZON STORE (This is an affiliate link)
https://www.amazon.com/shop/sipandfeast

PRODUCTS USED (This is an affiliate link)
Reduced Sodium Chicken Base: https://amzn.to/3N6bCQy
Lodge 7.5qt Dutch Oven: https://amzn.to/3Zu0tNc
Faay Flat Edge Wooden Spoon: https://amzn.to/3UW5oaE
Mercer Chef’s Knife: https://amzn.to/3rih6dW
Mac Chef’s Knife: https://amzn.to/48xkbvt
Workhorse Cutting Board: https://amzn.to/3kIgyvC

****PRINT RECIPE WITH INSTRUCTIONS AND PROCESS SHOTS****

Traditional Italian Wedding Soup

Ingredients
For the Meatballs
3/4 cup (90g) plain breadcrumbs
3 ounces (85g) milk
3/4 pound (340g) ground chuck
3/4 pound (340g) ground pork
3 cloves garlic – paste
1/2 cup (60g) Pecorino Romano – grated
1/4 cup flat leaf Italian parsley – minced
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
For the soup
1/4 cup (56g) extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion – diced
2 medium carrots – diced
2 large celery ribs – diced
10 cups (2400g) low sodium chicken stock – plus extra to thin (can also use water)
1 parmesan rind **optional**
1 bunch escarole – washed and chopped (can sub 16 ounces of spinach)
8 ounces (226g) acini di pepe pasta
salt and pepper – to taste

VIDEO EDITOR:
Billy Mark: @bluecrestproductions

Disclosure:
I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Today we’re making Italian wedding soup that huge monster thing of escaro is for the soup but don’t worry you can use Spanish too let’s get into it right now so right away for the meatballs and I like these meatballs to be really small we’re going to make them in a second we

Have 3/4 PB of 8020 Chuck 3/4 lb of ground pork now say you just want to use one you can just do all pork or all beef I have three cloves of garlic that I made into a paste I have 1/4 cup of flat leaf Italian parsley why am I saying

Flat leaf Italian parsley so you don’t buy curly parsley they sell that in the store often right next to it and that’s more for garnish not for taste so whenever you’re doing any of this type of cooking you always want to use the flat leaf parsley I have a Parmesan

Brine it’s kind of a secret weapon on this channel we probably have made 80 recipes with the Palm rinds obviously I didn’t invent this technique it’s something that I’ve just been doing for a long time and for any type of soup like this it just makes it better so

Save your palm rinds two two eggs that’s going to bind these meatballs together 1/4 cup of milk that’s going to give more moisture though you could probably omit the milk because there’s a lot of fat in this meat half a cup of peino Romano grated so I just got a block of

Locatelli there you can use you know the pregrated stuff or if you want you can just use uh parmesan cheese in here instead I prefer peino 3/4 cup of plain breadcrumbs feel free to use Italian seasoned if you like so that’s all the meatballs uh ingredients we’re also

Going to put salt and pepper in there for the broth for the soup I have two medium carrots that I diced I just left the skin on but I cleaned them that’s where a lot of the nutrients are two celery ribs diced and I did one medium

Onion diced so that’s kind of like our base of the soup right here is an important ingredient so I’m using homemade broo if you don’t have this use chicken base instead of the Box chicken stock or box beef stock that stuff is garbage every brand is bad I like doing

My own homemade though because there’s no salt in here now the other ingredient in our soup is escarole or Scaro this is one of the biggest escaro heads I’ve ever seen Tara this is like a mutant escaro head so we’re going to remove some of the leaves I’m going to show you

How to prep escaro so you don’t mess it up final thing for our soup is the pasta so now listen you can use any type of pasta small pasta you like right here I have a Chini de Pepe so this is a little tiny thing and it’ll get about four

Times the size when it Cooks it’s great but if you don’t want to use that one you can be like me and collect pasta all right so what I do is oh by the way you need 8 ounces of that but what I do is

When I make all my soups which is half a box half a pound I just save them all so what what is this little pen I think or something um ditalini this is a super common popular one imp pasta vazul farini orzo little macaroni elbows it doesn’t

Matter you can use what you like okay escaro it is normally not this wide you know this is a big one just remove off the outer leaves right away you don’t need them they’re going to be like the most bitter part and then outer leaves here like that are kind of like

Yellowing you don’t want those but and it’s normally a lot easier it’s a lot smaller than this so I’m just going to cut this Away now you can save that stuff for your compost pile or whatever when you cut it you want it to look like this and not have any more of that yellow Outer Edge there just rip off any parts that you see and now when you do this this is

Like super this is probably from the hot house there’s no there’s no dirt in here this is odd you know normally we buy this thing and it’s tremendous amount of dirt okay and I’m just going to cut the end off here salad spinner you’re going

To have to probably do like half at a time basically it’s like an inch and a half wide that I’m doing and then whatever the length is of it and just run through your salad spinner clean it I know it’s not always easy to get escroll in different parts of the

Country can you use spinach or something else absolutely traditionally probably in Italy they’re not even using escroll for this they’re probably using a different type of green spinach is like not the best duplication of this esir is a better one but spinach is fine please absolutely use spinach I like using

Spinach in it you can use spinach okay let’s do the meatballs 3/4 cup of breadcrumb in the bowl 1/4 cup of milk so what I’m doing here is I’m just adding the milk here to wet in these breadcrumbs up I’m putting a little bit more water in there

Like another tablespoon let it sit for 5 minutes it’s about 5 7 minutes on this and now we can just put everything else in we’re going to put in our meat first and I’m just going to break it up just spread it out a little bit one teaspoon

Of salt in here you’re using Diamond kosher double that to two teaspoons okay that’s the ratio if you’re using morens go one and 1/2 so it’ll be 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of morens all right I’m using Diamond kosher so that’s one teaspoon just going to try to push that

In there and then uh I’ll flip it and get it on the other side and then pepper about a half a teaspoon of black pepper all right I’m just going to flip it a little bit there and then I’ll put in my other teaspoon of the salt and the

Pepper so it’s total of 1 teaspoon of salt or again if you’re using the diamond kosher two teaspoons now we can just put in all the rest of the ingredients half a cup of grated peino when you want to roll these meatballs up really small I’m going to

Show you a kind of a little old school trick here water’s going to PR prevent them sticking to you also have a parchment paper line baking sheet I’m probably going to need two of these because we want to roll these meatballs super small typically this soup like

When they’re really small it’s a really nice textural difference between the greens and and the meatballs so I’m going to take a little bit of my meat here obviously if you are working on a massive cutting board you can do it this all in one shot okay

About that much so walked into a pizzeria saw somebody uh I think it was like an old woman doing this looked like she was making Mii but she wasn’t this place actually served the me balls as squares you know so just roll them out like this and don’t worry if it comes apart

Because you’re going to be cutting it anyway a little bit of water in there help it not stick to your hands take a cutter just like this and just take a little bit here okay there’s your section so we want really tiny meatball and then just you know just do a touch

But they can be irregular it doesn’t matter so if you take your whole section here here okay and then just go like this just keep cutting them very tiny just go to it like that so these are really tiny Meatballs 1 and2 lbs of meat you’re probably going to have like 100 and

Something meatballs I have three trays of them put them over here here’s one of those trays see how many are here so it’s probably going to be about 180 meatballs now it’s a pound and a half it’s going to be about 6 to eight servings here just think about it as

Weight how much meat you have here though it looks like a ton of meat balls they’re very tiny all right I have a 8q dutch oven which is pretty much you want a big pot so if you don’t have an 8q Dutch oven just use a regular 8q uh

Stock popt okay medium heat extra virgin olive oil here this is partana but just use a good you know high quality one I’m just coating the bottom about four or 5 tablespoons worth and then you can just put in your onions celery and carrots

All at the same time it will be okay and just mix them up get the oil to coat and we’re going to sauté these until they’re soft it’s going to take about 10 12 minutes maybe nine I’m going to do a pinch of salt on here to Aid in the

Water release so it’s been about maybe 8 minutes 9 minutes that’s how they look if you want them softer you can keep cooking it longer just don’t put you don’t really want to put a lot of color on it here’s the escroll all right I’m going to put it all in here escroll

Is very Hardy so if you using spinach save spinach till the end using escroll you can put it in now I’m going to put a little bit of water in there just that much and I just want to give the escoll a little bit of a head start just a

Couple minutes like this just to wilt it see how much I had originally when I put it into the pot and now it’s going down okay it’s been just just about 2 minutes in there and it wilted perfectly like that let’s put in all of our chicken broth or chicken

Stock or chicken base low make sure it’s low sodium that you use so let’s bring this up to a boil and let’s also add in our Palm rind if you don’t have one of these don’t worry you can still just put more grated cheese on

At the end okay I just kept the cover on it to boil quicker so now it’s boiling and now you can lower to a simmer just take your wooden spoon flat Edge wooden spoon right here and just try to dislodge it any brown bits which is not

Going to be much let’s let this simmer for about 10 minutes taste it now because we’re going to cook pasta pasta you know you always want to cook in salted water I’m going to put in a good pinch of salt here now remember my broth

My 10 cups have no salt in them I know the meatballs have peino and salt but still I need a little bit more in here if you are using better than bullon which is my you know product of choice even the reduced sodium is extremely

Salty so make sure you give it a taste you’re probably not going to need any extra salt I stirred it around I’m going to give it another taste that’s good just need a little pinch more so listen if you made your meatballs if you took your time and you made really small

Meatballs you can put your meatballs and your pasta in at the same time if your meatballs are bigger put them in a couple minutes early I raised my heat it’s about medium here you can go a little bit lower if you want and we’re just going to try to get these meatballs

In don’t worry they’ll stay together in as an individual meatball they’re not going to Clump okay that’s one sheet get give it a tiny stir there so they so they come apart which is what they did they cook so quickly when they’re small like this and I’m going to put the

Pasta into this is Theo CH de peepe which says 8 minutes but that’s when it’s out of boil when it’s at a moderate amount here it’s probably going to take more like 10 minutes just take your spoon you’re not going to crush any meatballs just go around the edge like

This and just you’re just trying to get that pasta just apart so it doesn’t stick at all and you won’t even be able to see any of the pasta right now but it’s going once it starts cooking it will start rising to the top and the little Pebbles essentially it’s pastina

That’s what it is it’s p pastina pasta it will just get larger pastina just means small pasta so like any of these pastas would be fine for that okay so you can see how they all rise into the top now all the pasta but it’s still

Hard you know I just checked it it’s probably been like 6 minutes in here you know a little stir just so nothing sticking to the bottom nothing sticking but just cook it right till that pasta is done and then right when it’s done we’ll serve up a nice Bowl for the taste Tester I must admit I did a little taste testing in advance and uh I don’t know actually I don’t want to give it away right now we’ll see what tower thinks then I’ll say in a second go ahead okay by the way it’s just piping hot so we

Just put a couple ice cubes in here to cool it down you want a little bit more cheese oh yeah you do a little swirl of uh really good extra virin olive oil on top too if you like I mean I know what I think it’s delicious okay it’s the meatballs right

They’re really good so usually when we make this I’ll or if I make this I’ll follow your turkey meatball recipe I mean you can’t deny that these have more flavor probably also the size of them you want to take the cop out of just being like Oh I don’t want to make 200

I’ll make 50 that are bigger there’s nothing wrong with that but I do think it’s a textural element here that vastly improves it to be honest with you I think if they were half the size of this it would probably be that much better yeah and it take you three times yeah as

Long to roll them no this is this is delicious homemade brto right you can tell that I mean it’s just like a punch of flavor look I love the be the bullion better than bullon beef and chicken base the problem is is that it still tastes

Artificial I don’t want to force you to start Mak making homemade stocks and and broths and everything but you don’t have to do it often you can do it one time and then you know you might need another freezer but you can actually Ultra concentrate them and so you won’t have

To have that much storage and then you can add water back to them how does it freeze with the pasta I mean the pasta is not going to be as good it’ll be a little bit mushier you know if you really if if you’re by yourself and

You’re making this recipe you might want to cook the pasta on the side just keep it and every time you heat yourself up a bowl during the week add some pasta in that’s what that’s what I would do but for a family four five whatever six you’re probably going to go through it

All in one night mhm this is a perfect wedding soup I wouldn’t do anything to to improve it I think it destroys the old the other one it does the old one is is so good though I still love that one I’m leaving that video up I’m not taking

It down so if you want to see me from about 3 years ago it’s a turkey meatball wedding this is better though yeah delicious thank you so what does it get I’m going to give it a 10 because it’s a perfect specimen of wedding soup yes probably don’t want to use the word

Specimen when we’re talking about no I listen I agree we’ll see you next Time