Italian Wedding Soup

Italian Wedding Soup is a family favorite filled with little meatballs, carrots, celery and bow tie pasta in a delicious chicken broth.

Italian Wedding Soup

My children love this soup.  It's easy to put together and filling enough for dinner.  I like to have fresh Italian bread to serve alongside it.  I don't follow any "written" recipe, so this is my version of Italian Wedding Soup.

I've been making this soup for years and it's a family favorite. I originally had the recipe/photos posted on a different blog that never really took off, so I thought I would share it with you here on Walking on Sunshine.

How to Make the Meatballs for Italian Wedding Soup

Start by making the meatballs using your favorite meatball recipe.  If you need a recipe for meatballs, you can check out my recipe HERE that I use to make meatballs and homemade tomato sauce.

I mixed together ground beef, egg, breadcrumbs, garlic, salt, pepper and a little water and form them into tiny meatballs.

Here's what I started with this morning, I didn't count but it's a lot! Don't worry, they all don't go in the soup!  I like to plan ahead. This amount will make enough tiny meatballs for about 4 recipes of soup.

Brown them in a little bit of oil. If you're making a lot like I did, you'll want to do this in batches.

Transfer to a baking sheet lined with paper towel to drain.

How to Make Italian Wedding Soup

Fill a pot with two containers of chicken broth. Add chopped carrots, celery and your meatballs to the broth. I added about 20 meatballs to this recipe.

Add some frozen spinach, about a third of the package. BUT please don't tell my children it's spinach, okay?  They think it's just parsley. You can also add fresh spinach but then my kids wouldn't believe it was parsley. So for now, I add frozen spinach.

How long to Cook the Italian Wedding Soup

I let the soup cook for about an hour or so until the meatballs are cooked through and the carrots and celery are tender. About 20 minutes before you're ready to serve the soup, cook some pasta
to add to your soup in a separate pot of boiling water.

When the pasta is done, drain and add to the soup. I used these tiny little "bow ties." In the past I've added cheese tortellini, DELICIOUS!

Here's the soup, all done.

Doesn't that look GOOD? Top your bowl of soup with some fresh Parmesan cheese.
How to Freeze Meatballs

So, what did I do with the rest of the meatballs? I divided them into three different piles, wrapped in aluminum foil, placed in a freezer bag.

Now the next time I want to make Italian Wedding Soup, I just go to my freezer, take a package of mini meatballs out and start the soup.

Let me know if you make the soup!