Italian Wedding Soup

 11 March 2023

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated All Time Best Soups, America's Test Kitchen, 2016, p. 63; also available online as Pittsburgh Wedding Soup.

I had heard of Italian Wedding Soup but I don't recall ever having it. Diane has had it and asked that I make it. I looked in my ATK soup book and found a recipe that didn't include a lot of ingredients and looked as if it would not take a lot of time. I assumed that it is a soup served at Italian weddings, but a little internet sleuthing proved this wrong. The name in Italian, minestra maritata, is perhaps better translated as "married soup" referring to the marriage of the flavors in the soup.

The preparation can be divided into two parts: making the meatballs and then making the soup. For the meatballs, bread and milk are mashed together into a panade to tenderize the meatballs. Egg yolk, Parmesan cheese, fresh parsley, garlic, salt, pepper, and dried oregano were stirred into the panade and a pound of ground beef was then mixed into the mixture by hand. (The recipe specifies meatloaf mix but that is not available in our supermarkets.) To form 1-inch meatballs I used a #60 disher which made 44 meatballs just a tad larger than 1-inch. While the meatballs chilled on a baking sheet in the refrigerator, the rest of the soup was made. Garlic and red pepper flakes (as usual, I used half the specified amount) were cooked in hot olive oil in a Dutch oven. Three quarts of chicken broth were added followed by chopped kale leaves. This was brought to a simmer and cooked until the kale was softened. The firmed meatballs were added along with orzo and cooked until the pasta was tender. Chopped fresh parsley was added. Total time was 100 minutes.

The soup is good, both freshly made and after a few days in the refrigerator. We should get about 5 meals from this recipe. I suspect it would freeze well, too. Diane compared the soup to chicken noodle but with meatballs and orzo instead of chicken bits and noodles. The meatballs are very tender. The soup was not at all spicy, except when I bit into a red pepper flake. The broth, made using Better Than Bouillon concentrate, is a key component of the soup. It's quality is a major factor determining the quality of the final product. This soup is certainly worth making again and there are many opportunities for variations,