Favorite on Friday: Italian Wedding Soup
There are a few recipes that are worthy of sharing, mainly because we’re all inundated with recipes. I have endless saved book-marks of recipes. So, I don’t want to waste your time reading another blog about recipes.
But…this Italian Wedding Soup is one worth sharing!
We all have our favorite go-to soups. I have been making chicken soup for over thirty years. It is a family favorite that was introduced to me by my mother-in-law, Mary. She is an excellent cook, especially Italian dishes, and we have enjoyed her meals for many years. Chicken soup with tortellini probably is my husband’s favorite meal. Hot soup sprinkled with fresh parmesan cheese and warm crusty bread- oh, so good. The homemade chicken soup requires a whole chicken, fresh carrots, celery, onions, parsley and slow cook for as long as you can. I will continue to make this soup, but I now have another option, Italian Wedding Soup.
A good friend of mine, Ruth, recently introduced me to a new recipe that I sampled when she was visiting her daughter Karen, who also lives here in Wilmington. Now Ruth is an excellent cook and is one of my go-to persons when I need meal-planning advice. After the first spoonful, I instantly knew I loved this soup. It is flavorful and delicious, and I want to share this recipe with you. It is well worth trying. I have no doubt this will be a keeper in your arsenal of recipes.
The recipe was created by The Cozy Cook. She has a great blog that you should check out. She’ll even send you meals and a shopping list to go along with the menus.
Now Ruth also introduced me to a product that makes this recipe even easier if and when you don’t have all day to make your own chicken broth. It’s called Zoup. You can buy it at Fresh Market. It’s currently on sale, so stock up on this chicken stock. Well, let me take that back. It really is more than just chicken stock, it actually is soup. You can heat it up and enjoy it without adding other ingredients. I would not do that from a box of chicken stock, just saying. This Zoup really is a time saver. But there’s one more time-saver I’d like to share with you when making this soup.
The meatballs call for half a pound of ground beef and half a pound of ground pork. If you’re anything like me, you typically don’t buy half a pound of meat, and I hate to have a half of pound of meat left in my refrigerator, and I’m not a fan of freezing meat. So, I doubled the meatball recipe. I made the tiny meatballs for the soup with half the portion, as per recipe directions, then I made normal sized meatballs with the other portion for a meal later in the week. Now, to simplify it even further, and not delay the soup making process, I put the large meatballs in the oven to bake so I could continue using the same frying pan to sauté the vegetables. I can be an impatient cook, so to fry all those meatballs, both large and small, would slow down dinner, so this made perfect sense!
So there you have it! It is a delicious soup, and you can get another meal out of it if you decide to double the meatball recipe. I’m not typically big on short-cuts, but once in a while, if you find a good one, why not?!
The other short-cut that I use, rather often, is Rao’s Marinara Sauce. It’s the only sauce in a jar that I really love. I will throw my larger-saved meatballs in the sauce and heat until they’re hot and have a quick easy meal later in the week. When you don’t have much time or energy on hand, this is a great option. I would typically buy a few jars of Rao’s when I find them on sale at various grocery stores, but now you can purchase Rao’s Marinara Sauce at Costco, which is pretty exciting. Apparently, you can also buy Rao’s at Amazon too. Well, of course, you can!
I hope you give this recipe a try. Please let me know what you think. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it as much as I do.
I forgot to add this earlier. My daughter Elisabeth said , '“we’ve missing out on this soup all our lives!” She’s been so deprived!!
