Classic Italian Wedding Soup

at my table there's always good conversation socializing and good food but when those holidays roll around I go that extra mile to make it special zupa maritata A celebratory meal always begins with a celebratory soup and in order to have a celebratory soup you have to have a great stock and a great stock requires a nice assortment of different B B and meats so here we have some beef ribs these are some beef Knuckles you know there's a lot of gelatin here and cotage and all that is good for the soup and all of the chicken parts now when you have your chickens and you buy it whole and you have the little wings the necks here you know all of that save it save it all put it in the freezer and when the time comes to make a great soup this is is [Music] it once the meat is in we get the vegetables leaks so these are green parts of the leaks all the way up make sure you wash them well because the leaks do have sand parsley with the stem and all just throw it right in and onions and carrots I'll put the carrots whole because then I'll reuse them in the soup so I don't want them to really fall apart pepper corns tomato paste and that gives it that tomatoey flavor and concentration and a little bit of color and those cheese rindes I always tell you when you're grating your cheese save the rinds you just scratch you 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 again 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 [Music] fat and that's [Music] that okay and let's put all of that back into the soup the carrots as [Music] 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 branka 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 Cho 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 uh 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 breadcrumbs do I need all of it I think about this much should do cheese yes cheese kind of binds everything Cho parsley yeah a nice amount of Cho parsley so I think that this should [Music] do and it's not so different than the regular meat po balls 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 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 escaro whether it's the chery whether it's spinach spinach makes it a little sweeter a little lighter but also we will add Oro which is the pasta you can add everything make the soup and everything but I would add the Oro 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 cooked let me taste for the seasoning the salt the aroma is delicious salt and now to finish the soup we'll put some oro oro is really barley but this is pasta that looks like barley the shapes and it's great Italians use it a lot in their soups and these are just spinach leaves and uh if you have escarole if you have any of the chory family that's delicious too but uh spinach makes it really sweet it's a sweet [Music] soup and this is the last step of the cooking of the soup 5 S minutes it'll be ready to be enjoyed the zupa thein the wedding soup is done the pasta is cooked the spinach is cooked voila and uh you you should serve it right away because you know you want it hot and uh you don't want the pasta to overcook grab a little bit of everything mhm and I think that's a nice presentation and so you can see that's reinforce there's a lot to eat there the rich richness of the soup the vegetables the meatballs and then I'm going to add some cheese Mama Mia okay and um it's hot I want to get in there but it's hot Let Me Maybe cut a little piece right here and I get a little spinach and I get a little bit of the Oro it's really good it's delicious it's sweet it's complex the meat just enough texture the spinach is really really sweet nice the carrots they use it as a beginning as an opener of a big kind of festive meal but certainly this could hold up being the whole meal and it's [Music] delicious to learn more about Lydia access to videos and to get recipes tips techniques and much more visit us online at Lydia italy.com [Music]

Channel: Lidia Bastianich

Views: 26,998

Keywords: Lidia Bastanich, Italian food, Italian - American food, Italian-American cuisine, cooking shows, learn how to cook, delicious Italian food recipes

Id: X29ceCSMDO8

Length: 9min 11sec (551 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 21 2023