Italian Wedding Soup
New York Times Cooking - Recipe Review
Italian Wedding Soup first timer here. This recipe came across my New York Times Cooking app and looked hearty and wholesome. It was also the perfect excuse to need to run out and buy a Dutch Oven, a kitchen essential that I have never owned. A quick trip to Home Goods and I was pleasantly surprised with a sage green Dutch oven from The Lodge that perfectly matched the paint color in my kitchen. We’ll call it Italian Soup kismet.
So what exactly is Italian Wedding Soup … and is it true that it is served at Italian weddings to ensure the bride and groom have enough gusto and energy to make it through a lonnnngggg wedding night? *wink *wink. Sadly no, but this trope was too good to leave out.
Italian Wedding Soup Lore:
“minestra maritata” translating to married soup, refers to the marriage of meat and vegetables in the dish.
Italian wedding soup is considered a peasant dish and comes from “cucina povera” the poor kitchen. Traditionally made with bitter green vegetables and meat scraps from butchering meat.
Often served during Easter and Christmas or in alignment with annual winter pig slaughtering and not at weddings
The Americanized version includes the addition of pasta and meatballs over meat scraps.
Recipe Notes: New York Times Cooking - Italian Wedding Soup
Meatballs - This recipe called for 80 mini meat balls out of only a Lb of meat, that would result in teeennnyyy tiny meats balls around .2 oz each. I opted for larger sized meat balls, a heaping tablespoon worth of meat per ball and landed around 21 medium size meat balls. Enough for about five servings of soup with four meat balls each. Also rolling 80 meat balls, dang. Choose your own adventure here, it does sound like the tiny meatballs are a more common choice.
Pasta - Doubled the amount of pasta from 1/2 to 1 cup. I chose orzo. I do love acini di pepe though, which is what the recipe called for. Would work just as well.
Greens - Next time will opt for a heartier green, like Kale, also seeing Escarole used in a lot of traditional recipes.
Acid / Chicken Boullion - My broth wasn’t as flavorful as I would have liked. I ended up adding a heaping tablespoon of chicken Boullion, the zest and juice of one lemon. This did the trick. White wine would also be a good option here to add flavor, use to deglaze the pan after meat balls are done cooking.
Toppings: Dressed this with some good old parm, next time would also add toasted breadcrumbs and bit more fresh parsley.
References:
The Marriage of Meat and Leafy Greens: the history of Italian Wedding Soup | America Domani
Do you think you know the Italian wedding soup history? (nonnabox.com)