Saturday, December 13, 2008

Homemade Italian Wedding Soup Recipe

I've had this recipe for Italian Wedding Soup now for some time. I'm not sure where I got it, but it is made in a pressure cooker. You can prepare it in a soup pot, it will just take longer to cook. Personally, I like to have a pot of soup simmering on the stove on a winter day. It makes the place feel homey! By the way, I did use my pressure cooker, and it turned out great.

So, let's get started! The recipe called for 3/4 pound of ground beef. I used a pound of ground turkey meat. Add one egg, 2 TB of Parmesan cheese, grated, 1 tsp oregano, 1 1/2 tsp minced garlic (I used garlic in the tube...that's the squiggle in the front right), 1/2 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper.
Mix all of the above together with your hands. You can use disposable gloves for this step; I hate getting my hands gooey. Set the bowl aside and proceed to the "broth" portion.

Dice one yellow onion and add this to your pot or pressure cooker with 1 TB of olive oil. Saute until onions are translucent.

Next, add 8 cups of chicken broth. This is 2 containers of ready made broth. Or, if you have your own homemade chicken stock, use that.

Add 1/2 c. orzo pasta or other small pasta., 1 TBSP of Italian herbs, and 3 carrots, diced. Below is a picture of some orzo. I got mine at Whole Foods when I was in Las Vegas. I love that store!

Next, while the ingredients are simmering in the pot, begin making your meatballs. I used a melon scoop. The meatballs should be smallish, so I thought the melon ball scoup was the perfect size. I kind of scooped with the tool, then packed it with my other hand. Gently drop these into the simmering pot until you have made up all of the meatballs.

Add 1 pound of spinach to the pot, then shut your pressure cooker, and let it cook for 1 minute.
Release the steam, and slowly take off the lid. I served this with freshly grated Parmesan cheese. We had some ciabatta rolls, and I made turkey with provolone cheese sandwiches. Some dear friends came in from out of town for a very quick visit, and we enjoyed the soup together.

This is such a healthy, delicious soup. Hope that you enjoy it! I'd love to hear your comments.

4 comments:

sunny said...

The soup was DELICIOUS! I made it today which was a perfect soup day. Snowing all day in St. George, Utah? Who would believe that?

Unknown said...

Loved it, I make a similar fusion of pasta e fagoli and italian wedding soup with lentils and stuff but this time decided to stick to your recipe and try it in my new pressure cooker.

such a short cook time, and so much flavor!

Anonymous said...

Can I pressure can this? It sounds like the perfect wedding soup.

Glenda said...

I decided that the pasta would not can well, and I don't like the idea of canned spinach (yuck). However, if you canned everything else and just added pasta to the canned soup, then spinach right before serving it would work. Check with your local extension office for more details.