ITALIAN WEDDING SOUP

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Come on. Nana would absolutely be proud. Extraordinary. I just fell in love. Let’s get married. Ingredients. This week I want to reinvent a very old traditional southern Italian soup that is made during the holidays. It is your classic wedding soup. beloved beloved by many many people all over the world because it is a traditional customary uh grandma soup. It’s earthy. It is full in nutritional values. It’s warm. It’s celebratory and they call it the wedding soup for a reason. Why in the dialect zupa marada? Why is it maridada wedded? the wed soup because you are marrying a whole lot of ingredients all together which include greens, herbs, some spices, sometimes different cuts of meats. It is usually done with sausage and different parts of the pig. However, we need to make it pasta queen friendly for all and especially gorgeous for kids. So, it needs to be appetizing, simple in my opinion, and it needs to have something about it in terms of the meat cuts in it that will invite all people of all ages, including my four kids, to try it. This is my challenge for this week. So, I’ve recreated a little meat, let’s say, mix, which we’re going to prepare in the shape of a tiny meatball. So, it’s really is a pasta queen wedding soup, but in the meatballs, we’re going to add a little potato. So, they’re going to be soft, gorgeous, a little like, you know, sweeter, more delicate, and I’m pretty certain my kids are going to absolutely love it. So, let’s make it. It’s actually simpler than it looks. Customarily my grandmother and grandmothers would have put pork meat. Today we are not using that. My kids are not so fond. So that’s why I’ve created a meatball that I am absolutely certain they will devour. This is beef, boiled yukong gold potato, bread crumbs, parigano regano, egg, salt, pepper and parsley. Super easy. Ground beef, bread crumbs, one egg, parmyo, a little parsley, potato, salt, pepper. These meatballs you want to make tiny, like little tiny bite-s size. And we’re going to obviously try to make them all the same. But it’s kind of nice that sometimes you can tell they were made with love by hand. They’re a little bit unique each one of them. But look, I want to show you my hand versus the meatball. You see? And on you go until you’ve rolled them out. Set them aside, of course. And then I show you the perfect base for the soup. Now, remember, these are going in a soup and in a broth. So, you want to make sure that they’re super compacted and round and no cracks in it. the more cracks in the little meatball and the more chances there are of a opening in the broth cooking process. You see this little crack here? You don’t want that. So, massage until smooth. Nice. Love this for all of us. The kids are going to be mind blown. Now we set them aside and we continue bay leaf pinch of salt. It’s a little bit of an inspiration from the matza ball soups that I’ve had since being in the US and my non carolina’s wed soup. You do not want to create a a soup that is like a horror movie with a pork foot floating inside. You know, those are like 150y old ways of making it where they had any scraps was good as gold. Now, for the kids nowadays, it might be a bit of a put off to have a floating pork foot into your broth. So, we’re going to make it kid-friendly, PG-13, and nobody needs to be scared about your grandmother’s soup anymore. Okay, I’m here to save you. Commercial break. This is a just gorgeous dip. We are sizzling the onions with the carrots and the celery on a very low to medium flame until they almost melt. I’m doing this ahead of time with the salt so it extracts all the juices. And then I proceed to cook the rest of the ingredients. It is very important and I repeat, very very important. You must not brown or burn the onions. So be on this on a low to medium flame and let them melt almost into this gorgeous foundation that’s going to serve as the base for all of the incredible flavor that this soup will evolve into. Another gorgeous tip is if you’re seeing that they’re not quite melting and you’re afraid dough burn, add a splash of hot water at this point, but just a splash so that it reduces a little bit the temperature while it still cooks and melts at the same time. Tomato basically cabbage. Who doesn’t love this gorgeous little thing? I absolutely love cabbage. We’re going to do it in nice strips. Now, this is obviously really a personal family recipe. Okay, we are going to use broccoli rub because it’s one of my favorite. Absolutely one of my favorite. Using the flowers of the broccoli rub and the leaves. Okay, at this point you want to add a tiny splash of water. Now a typical green is the escarol greens. Very good, packed with nutrition. You can either use this spinach, you know, kale, black kale. There’s so many different families of leafy greens. A little less carol bay leaf is done. What I’m doing here is a two or three steps of delazing with water so that it adds that extra layer of flavor. And not only as soon as the water content will go down, I’m going to seal the meatballs in these juices before I delaze again. See what we’re doing here? We’re kind of giving a light glaze. We’re glazing them while we’re sealing the meatballs all together. The meatballs are absorbing and cooking in the juices. The veggie are getting a little glazed just ever so slightly like a mild tan on the beach. I want to feel a little stickiness before I go with the water and create that broth. You see this brown? That’s going to go and melt in the soup once you add the water. All of the sides that have that nice glazed bits of meat and veggies and everything we put in. Now they’re going to sink into the broth and it’s going to melt all into one. Not touch it for a few minutes. Let us do it. Now we add the salt on a simmer, low to medium flame, 20 to 30 minutes. Gorgeous deep alert. This is an old way of not wasting nothing. Okay, imagine, you know, 100 years ago, nonas used to bake the bread at home, exchange it with the neighbors. Now, three, four, five, even a week goes by and now you have brick solid sourdough bread. What do we do with it? So many things. You can use it in dessert, but one of my most favorite thing is chop it up into these thick cubes. Toss it before the soup goes in. They float up. They melt almost instead of pasta. Let’s use the old bread so that we don’t waste absolutely anything. A sprinkle of parmyo, of course. Just gorgeous. You na would be proud. Now, this is truly a wed soup. A marriage of all ingredients, a symphony of flavors. Uh, you know, something magical just happened. I can assure you, you serve this just like this to your party table. Not even a party. Friends, family, everybody’s going to fall in love. They’re going to feel warm and fuzzy inside. They’re going to thank you forever. This is the ultimate most nourishing nonstyle holiday style wedded soup. See you next week.