Italian Wedding Soup

I love soups and will be the first to admit that I’m not very good at making them but hold on, the soups that I’ve made (not that many actually) have come out pretty good, but I haven’t been able to master them yet. There is something about soup that terrifies me; maybe it’s something to do with the long ingredient list. Have you even seen anybody make soup using only five ingredients, because if you have please have them contact me.

If you happen to have a semi-soup phobia as me, you’ll be happy to know that there is “help” for us and the help ladies and gentlemen is can soup. I absolutely love can soup and miss them tremendously. I’m in my kitchen at the moment, grilling some vegetables (I am on this new health regime where I’m trying to eat more vegetables and TRYING not to eat carbohydrates at night), but I would kill for a grilled cheese sandwich and a can of chicken or mushroom soup.

At one point in my life while I was living in America, Thursdays used to be grilled cheese and can soup days and if I could turn back the clock, for a couple more of those days I would. I’ve come to the conclusion that we take the availability of food for granted. If I went into a store here in Poland and asked someone to show me where the canned soup aisle is, I would get laughed at. At the moment I have one can of imported mushroom soup that I paid a fortune for but I’m saving that for a rainy day

It must be that time of the month because I have been craving everything and one of those things was Italian Wedding Soup. Italian wedding soup and I met about six or seven years ago and it was love at first sight but he is sadly no longer available to me. I searched the Internet nearly like a mad woman until I found the perfect recipe and I think I did. While doing my recipe research, I stumbled upon a new cooking website called www.recipegirl.com and that is where I found my Italian Wedding Soup made by Barefoot Contessa. Let me just have a moment here and say how much I love Barefoot Contessa, she is simply amazing and when you get a moment, be sure to Google or you tube her. Anyways, I got home late Friday night and quickly ordered a few groceries online and crossed my fingers that I would find everything and I did except for fresh spinach. Seriously, how difficult would it really be to sell spinach in September?

This recipe really consisted of two separate stages which were later combined into something unbelievably good. The first step was to make the meatballs which consisted of the following ingredients: ground turkey, turkey sausage, breadcrumbs, minced garlic, fresh parsley, parmesan and pecorino cheese, milk, one egg and some salt & pepper. For the meatballs I only used about 500grams of turkey because I couldn’t find any turkey sausage. I should probably mention that here one can only find one type of sausage and I’ve got no idea what is in it, but I do know that it’s raw white sausage that’s cooked for approximately ten minutes and put on bread or the same sausage but instead of being raw and white, it’s orange and smoked.  I combined all of the ingredients into a bowl and mixed everything together and rolled them into 1-inch mini meatballs and baked them in the oven for about thirty minutes. After I took them out of the oven, I just had to taste one and boy where they good. They were crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside and the cheese added a little extra oomph.

After eating about five meatballs (still making sure they all tasted the same) I started making the soup. In a large pot I sautéed some carrots, celery and onion until softened. I then added ten cups of chicken stock and ¼ cup of dry wine and brought everything to a boil. I also added a cup of pasta to the broth and simmered for eight minutes or until the pasta was tender. Last but not least, I added the meatballs and ¼ cup of fresh dill.

I am proud of myself because this soup came out great. It really is unbelievably good and it is something I will definitely be making again. The meatballs were delicious, the carrots were borderline soft, the pasta was al dente and the dill gave it a nice twist. Next time I make this, I’ll have to find spinach just to see how it changes to the flavor of the soup and less pepper because I might have over seasoned it just a bit. I still have about a bowl left in the fridge and the longer the soup sits, the better the flavors become. Definitely a keeper!!