Italian Wedding Soup. (Pics)
Last edited Fri Nov 15, 2013, 07:32 PM - Edit history (1)
The results of the polls I put up the other day were pretty clear, and since it looked as if there was enough interest in both soups, that's what I decided to do (I'll do the Avgolemono later this week along with the Moussaka, the clear winner on the Entree' Poll!). Since both Italian Wedding and Greek Avgolemono are chicken stock based, I decided to make my own chicken stock in order to better control the quality and flavor. Since these two soups are really VERY different, I wanted most of all to control the salt, as I would be adding meatballs (which will have salt added) to this soup and not to the Lemono. Chicken stock done this way is not nearly as involved as the beef stock I made for the French Onion, so it was actually fairly quick.
In the other threads I've done like this I have provided a link to a recipe as a starting point. Not this time! When I've made this before, I used my favorite Italian cookbook. But searches on Google offered so much variety of ingredients as to make a starting point ...well....pointless! I'll leave that up to you, dear reader to determine which specific ingredients you want in your soup, but the basics are as follows;
I started out with 1 Each, Regulation Plastic Bagged Chicken;
Now I have carved plenty of chickens and turkeys in my time, but I've boned/separated maybe ONE before this. There are plenty of good videos on YouTube on how to do this if you don't do it regularly, but the one I found that was pretty good is by Gordon Ramsay. Just type "Gordon Ramsay: How to Part a Chicken" in the YouTube search and it will come right up. For something really interesting, search for Martin Yan boning a chicken in 18 seconds!
Here's what it looked like when I got done;
I set aside the Meaty bits, and put them in the freezer. Into the pot with the carcass and the rest.
I pretty much followed Ramsay's method on this, with the exception that I didn't have any leeks, so I just had a basic mirpoix of carrots, onion and celery, rough chopped. This is what it looked like as it all went in;
After bringing it to a boil and then a good simmer for about 45 minutes, I strained it away and this is what it yielded - about 3 quarts or so.
The ingredients for the meatballs. I make meatballs for spaghetti and keep extras in the freezer, so I have WAY more meat here than is needed for a small pot of soup. As I said above, I found the variety of ingredients for the meatballs, much less the soup was dramatic, so after thinking about it for a while, I just decided to do what I always do when making Italian meatballs. My basic recipe. I've got Ground Round, Veal and Pork, Eggs, Breadcrumbs, cheese, herbs (More than just the parsley went in - Oregano & Basil, primarily) , garlic, olive oil and S & P
In to the stand mixer and here's the result;
Since I am going to basically poach these, I am going to chill them before I add them to the soup, hence the foil lined baking sheet;
Keeping in mind that I want these about bite sized, as opposed to as big as what I put in Sauce, I roll them about the size of the end of my thumb - or meatball hail stone sized!
About halfway through. I made about 30 or so;
A couple of medium carrots, 1/4" dice.....
And Spinach. This was the bagged, triple washed ready-to-eat type. Now here was a problem for me. A BIG one! The best soup like this I've had in a restaurant, and the best batch I've ever made, used Escarole. Escarole has a much better "tooth", if you will, when cooked BUT I COULDN'T FIND IT! At least not close by and I didn't want to do a 40 mile round trip for a soup ingredient! So, as many of the recipes called for spinach anyway, I reluctantly decided to go this route. If you can get Escarole, I heartily recommend using it, but as it turned out, the spinach worked quite well.
I chopped the spinach down, trying as best I could to make sure there were no whole leaves.
The pasta cooked VERY al dente'. Many recipes will say to cook the pasta separate and others will just say throw it in the pot. I think this is OK the smaller the pasta. If you are using a larger pasta, cooking it normally before it goes into the soup will make sure you don't lose a third of your broth! So I just figured really al dente is what I wanted, if it says cook for 7 minutes, cook for 3 1/2 or 4. This was another bit of a screw up, as I thought I had a smaller pasta in the cupboard. As it turned out, I didn't, just the leftover box of Penne from when I made the Pastitsio a while back. Many recipes call for Orzo or other small pastas like stars or even tiny elbows. Anyway, I want this to be bite sized, and though this Penne isn't huge, it's about an inch long. So I cut it up! By hand! Ahhhh the things we do for our craft, eh?
At this point I have about 1 1/2 of the quarts of stock in my pot PLUS a little beef stock I had leftover in the fridge. I STILL have about a quart of the beef stock I made a couple months back, but I didn't want to defrost the entire container for only a cup or so, so what I have in here is just canned beef stock with my homemade chicken stock. I've added the carrots and let it simmer by this time, and now I'll add the meatballs. I've got it just under a boil, and I added the meatballs kind of slowly, as they just came out of the fridge. Big ol' pot of Spaghetti sauce going on the burner next door!
Once I have all the meatballs in and the soup comes back up to temp, I put the spinach in.
It cooks down and in really fast - just a stir or two and 30 seconds later, it looked like this.
Give it about 10 minutes for the meatballs to thoroughly cook and that's it! Taste for seasoning, let it come up to temp really good, make sure the carrots are tender and you're good to go!
I used my veggie peeler to get some good shavings off a hunk of Parmesan and topped the bowl with those......
And some grated as well.
And two quarts for the freezer!
A very versatile soup you can add to and take away LOTS of ingredients to suit your fancy. Give it a try, I'm sure you'll like it.
ENJOY!
= new reply since forum marked as read
He's a professional chef. 
Can you ship one of those quarts down to me? 
Love your threads! 
I'd love my own personal chef!
Austin is always open if you are ever down this way, lotto or not!
Plus, I have two Bostons you need to meet! 
Glad you liked it.
