Italian Wedding Soup: How to Prepare It - Lidia's Cooking Series [Updated Guide] (2024)

There’s always good conversation, socializing, and good food at my table, but when the holidays come around, I go the extra mile to make it special super marita a celebratory meal always begins with a celebratory soup and a great stock requires a nice assortment of different bones and meats so here we have some beef ribs these are some beef knuckles you know there’s a lot of gelatin here and cartilage peppercorns, tomato paste, and that gives it a tomatoey flavor and concentration and a little bit of color, and those cheese rinds, i always tell you when you’re grating your cheese to save the rinds. You just scratch the outside, and I think I’ll cut it in half just to spread out the good flavor, and you throw it right in the soup, and that will deliver a lot of flavor to your soup. you bring it to a boil then you lower it and let it simmer and we’ll salt it towards the end so the stock has cooked we strained it the meat that was in it we fished that out the carrots are here the meat is chilled now and so let’s collect whatever pieces of meat we can and we’ll put it back in so this is from the rib cut it in small pieces here i have some of the chicken meat everything that was on those bones we collected let’s let’s cut off the fat and that’s that okay and let’s put all of that back into the soup the carrots as well let’s get this back in the soup now let’s get to the meatballs and i have questions and i get a lot of questions about this soup we have another question from carol branca and she’s from rhode island and carol wants to know when making wedding soup i make my meatballs with hamburger grated cheese and parsley is this the right way to do it well carol here we are so you said you’re making it with hamburger right when i say hamburger uh it could be chopped meat mixed meat yes it could be all beef here i have pork and turkey but you can make it all chicken just as long as you flavor it uh well and it’s nice and tasty then you get grated cheese we got that here and parsley we got that here and ah you’re missing the breadcrumbs and you’re missing the egg so you’re part of the way correct this is how i make it so you have the hamburger meat get the egg in there some salt now because i want to make sure that it’s seasoned properly maybe a little bit of pepper okay the bread crumbs do i need all of it i think about this much should do cheese yes cheese kind of binds everything chopped parsley yeah a nice amount of chopped parsley so i think that this should do it’s not so different than the regular meatballs but of course to get it all going i need to get in there and give it a nice mixing all together and voila now it’s a question of rolling them not too big small meatballs and you can do this ahead of time certainly you can have somebody help you make them ahead of time keep them in the refrigerator the soup can be made ahead of time and in this soup we will add of course the green part whether it’s the escarole whether it’s the chicory whether it’s spinach spinach makes it a little sweeter a little lighter but also we will add orzo which is the pasta you can add everything make the soup and everything but i would add the orzo just before you’re ready to serve it because you don’t want the pasta to overcook okay i’m just about done with the meatballs and we’ll put them right into the soup just like that all right Okay, the meatballs should be just about done; let me taste for the seasoning, the salt, and the aroma of delicious salt. To finish the soup, we’ll put some orzo, which is really barley, but this is pasta that looks like barley; the shapes are great, and it’s great. Italians use it a lot in their soups, and these are just spinach leaves, and if you have escarole or any of the chicory family, that’s delicious too, but spinach makes it really sweet; it’s a sweet soup, and this is the last step of the cooking of the soup; in five to seven minutes, it will be ready to be enjoyed. the zuppa di rinforzamento the wedding soup is done the pasta is cooked the spinach is cooked voila and you should serve it right away because you want it hot and you don’t want the pasta to overcook grab a little bit of everything um and i think that’s a nice presentation and so you can see this ring for Samantha there’s a lot to eat there’s the richness of the soup the vegetables the meatballs and then you.

Question & Answer – 💬