Italian Wedding Soup December 1, 2006
Posted by Sarah in Dinner.2 comments
One night, a couple of weeks ago, I had a craving for Italian Wedding Soup … or at least the version of Italian Wedding Soup that I know and love. When I searched the Internet to try to find a recipe that matched my idea of Italian Wedding Soup I only found ones that had a wide variety of ingredients. No two were alike and none of them fit my idea of the soup I wanted to eat.
So, I decided to come up with my own. My only problem was finding pastini or any other small pasta. I’ve seen such small pasta before, but for some reason when I was shopping for this soup there was none to be found. So, I used the smallest I could find, something called rosemarina pasta. It worked out pretty well, though it was a little big for my idea of pasta in Italian Wedding Soup. I also didn’t have garlic on hand at the time so I ended up using garlic powder. This worked out fine as well. The meatballs are a little spicy (I’m kind of a wimp though) so use your discretion in terms of spice. I hope you enjoy my version of Italian Wedding Soup!
Italian Wedding Soup
Ingredients
1 pound 85% ground beef
1 pound pork sausage
1 cup dry bread crumbs
3 eggs
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
2 t. dried basil
1 t. dried parsley
1-2 tsp.red pepper powder
10 cups chicken broth
1 pkg frozen spinach
8 oz pastini or small pasta
garlic powder (or fresh garlic if you have it)
parsley, basil, pepper, salt
Directions
Put meatball ingredients in a large bowl and mix well. Fry a little piece in some oil (or microwave it) and taste it to check the seasoning. Roll the meatballs to your desired size. I preferred those 1/4 – 1/2 inch in diameter. You can make them bigger or smaller to your taste.
Before rolling the meatballs, heat the chicken broth to a simmer and add the garlic powder, parsley, basil, salt and pepper to taste. Add your desired amount of meatballs to the simmering broth.
Cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Defrost the spinach and squeeze the excess water from it. Add the pastini and spinach. Stir. Cook an additional 10-15 minutes. Taste and check the seasonings. Adjust seasonings as needed. Serve with salad and crusty bread.
Note: Depending on how big or small you make your meatballs, you may have a lot of meatballs leftover, unless you want a meatball heavy soup. I chose to freeze the rest to save for the next time I make the soup.
