This Italian Wedding Soup is chock-full of meatballs and pasta and vegetables- adapted from Ina Garten’s Back to Basics Cookbook.
Italian Wedding Soup
There are some days that soup feels entirely perfect and comforting for dinner. But can soup be considered a main dish? My husband doesn’t think so. When soup is placed in front of him for his evening meal, he looks at me, smiles and says, “What’s for dinner?” My loving response is, “Sweetheart… some soups are meant to be main dishes. This Italian Wedding Soup is one of them.” And it is!
🛒 Ingredients Needed:
- ground turkey
- turkey sausage
- fresh white bread crumbs
- grated Parmesan cheese
- fresh Italian parsley and fresh dill
- minced garlic
- milk
- egg
- kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
- olive oil
- onion, carrot and celery
- chicken broth
- dry white wine
- small pasta
- fresh baby spinach
How to make Italian Wedding Soup:
*The complete, printable recipe is in the recipe card at the end of this post.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
PREPARE THE MEATBALLS:
Place the ground meats, bread crumbs, Parmesan, parsley, garlic, milk, egg, 1 teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon pepper in a bowl and combine gently with a fork. With a teaspoon, drop 1-inch meatballs onto a sheet pan lined with parchment paper (you’ll make somewhere around 40 meatballs). Bake for 30 minutes, until cooked through and lightly browned. Set aside.
PREPARE THE SOUP:
Heat the olive oil over medium-low heat in a large stock pot. Add the onion, carrots, and celery and saute until softened, 5 to 6 minutes, stirring occasionally. Pour in the chicken broth and wine and bring to a boil. Add the pasta to the simmering broth and cook an additional 6 to 8 minutes, until the pasta is tender. Add the fresh dill and then the meatballs to the soup and simmer for 1 minute. Taste for salt and pepper. Stir in the spinach and cook for 1 minute, until the spinach is just wilted.
💡How to make fresh white bread crumbs:
Don’t be tempted to use those yucky dry breadcrumbs sold in a can. You can make fresh breadcrumbs quickly and easily in a food processor or in a coffee or spice grinder with whatever bread you have on hand (even English muffins and pita bread will work!)
You’ll get the best results if your bread is slightly stale. Tear the slices into pieces (remove the crusts first) and fill your processor or grinder about half full. Pulse until you get bread crumbs. If you don’t have a processor or a grinder, you can rub slices of stale bread on a box grater instead.
➡️ Meatball Tips:
- Baking the meatballs in the oven makes this entire process so much simpler than trying to saute 40 meatballs in a skillet. They’re done cooking after about 30 minutes. Then you can set them aside until you’re ready to add them to your Italian Wedding Soup.
- You might be tempted to just use frozen meatballs for this recipe, and it’s perfectly okay if you do. But you need to know that making this homemade recipe will be so much better!
- I set my meatballs on the counter once when I was preparing for a dinner party. Then I went into my bedroom to get ready, and when I returned to my kitchen I found that my dog had helped herself to all forty meatballs. I guess she thought they were good too! An emergency call was made to one of my guests to ask her to stop and get some frozen meatballs at the store. They weren’t nearly as good as these though!
✔️ How to store Italian Wedding Soup:
This soup is excellent when eaten the next day. I find that soups with pasta tend to lose a lot of their broth when sitting overnight in the refrigerator. For this reason, I always buy an extra can of chicken broth to add to the soup the next day. This will ensure you’ll still be eating soup and not just soaked up noodles!
❤️ What I Love About This Recipe:
- This is one of my go-to soup recipes because it’s so delicious.
- It’s a great soup to serve to company.
- This is a recipe that is worth the effort. I love having leftovers!
Here are a few more hearty soup recipes you might enjoy:
Italian Wedding Soup
Ingredients
MEATBALLS:
- 12 ounces ground turkey
- 8 ounces turkey sausage (casings removed)
- ⅔ cup fresh white bread crumbs
- ½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
- ¼ cup chopped fresh Italian parsley
- 2 teaspoons minced garlic
- 3 tablespoons milk
- 1 large egg, lightly beaten
- kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
SOUP:
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 cup minced yellow onion
- 1 cup diced carrots (about 3 medium)
- 1 cup diced celery (about 2 large stalks)
- 12 cups chicken broth
- ½ cup dry white wine
- 1 cup small pasta (any will do, but I like to use mini bow ties)
- ¼ cup minced fresh dill
- 8 ounces fresh baby spinach (trimmed, washed & patted dry)
- grated Parmesan cheese, for serving (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350℉.
PREPARE THE MEATBALLS:
- Place the ground meats, bread crumbs, Parmesan, parsley, garlic, milk, egg, 1 teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon pepper in a bowl and combine gently with a fork. With a teaspoon, drop 1-inch meatballs onto a sheet pan lined with parchment paper (you’ll make somewhere around 40 meatballs). Bake for 30 minutes, until cooked through and lightly browned. Set aside.
PREPARE THE SOUP:
- Heat the olive oil over medium-low heat in a large stock pot. Add the onion, carrots, and celery and saute until softened, 5 to 6 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the chicken broth and wine and bring to a boil. Add the pasta to the simmering broth and cook an additional 6 to 8 minutes, until the pasta is tender. Add the fresh dill and then the meatballs to the soup and simmer for 1 minute. Taste for salt and pepper. Stir in the spinach and cook for 1 minute, until the spinach is just wilted. Ladle into soup bowls and sprinkle each serving with extra grated Parmesan cheese.
Notes
- Make sure you have some extra broth on hand. When leftovers are stored, the pasta tends to soak up the broth and you’ll want to add some more later.
- If you’re counting WW Points be sure to use lean ground turkey in your meatballs.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
I grew up eating Italian wedding soup at family celebrations and as a first course on holidays (my mom was Sicilian). With all due respect to Ina, I shuddered at the inclusion of dill (really?) and, please, the soup is much better if you use escarole over spinach, although spinach will do in a pinch.
Good stuff, I skipped the step of baking the meatballs and just dumped them in the soup raw and let the juices cook into the broth.
this certainly is a meal. So much goodness going on there. Love it
Oh and I also used acini di pepe noodles instead. They are the little round balls. LOL
I made this for a work function and this was all anyone talked about. I changed it up a little bit by using ground chicken and hot italian chicken sausage patties. Also I added about 2-3 more garlic cloves to the meatballs and used seasoned bread crumbs and a parmesan and romano cheese mix. I omitted the wine and dill as well. It was amazing and I am now getting requests to make it for other functions. ENJOY
Dear Ina,
I am a soup person. I cook anything for my family from Chinese shark fin soup (premium soup usually served in wedding banquet) to wonton, Korean tofu soup, Thai tom yum, Vietnamese pho… I am planning to make this Italian wedding soup the first time for my office Thanksgiving potluck this Monday. I like your recipe the best, and the picture is worth a thousand words!!! Thank you so much, I am adding this delicious recipe to my soup list. and it will definitely be on my family Thanksgiving dinner as well!
Have a fabulous Sunday,
Best Regards,
Tiffany P.
Just made this… tastes great! Didn’t find 8oz of spinach to be enough… thanks!
Mmm, that looks really good. My roommate would be all over that soup. I should make him some.
So glad you made it and liked it, Lori. I saw her do it…but it looked like such a chore! You make it look simple!
I just woke up and you are making me HUNGRY! Thanks! =)
It’s been really cold here and I am house bound due to an injury, so soup (this one in particular) sounds marvelous. =)