Did you know that despite how the name suggests, Italian wedding soup is not served at Italian weddings. The name comes from the Italian words “minestra maritata” which means “married soup”. It refers to the marriage of flavours from the meat and greens that go into it. I thought that was pretty interesting.

Now that we learned its origins, let’s dig in to this bowl of yumminess. I love this soup because it has so many components that it is almost a meal on its own (you just need a slice of bread on the side). So there are delicious little meatballs, pasta and a variety of veggies all in a delicious broth.

This was my first time making this soup but it will for sure not be my last. I used a recipe from the Cooking Classy blog (link here). It was so flavourful and not too difficult to make. There was a bit of prep with chopping the onion, carrot and celery but that is pretty typical for most soups. There was also spinach to chop and some fresh herbs too. Very basic stuff overall though.

The most iconic part of this soup is the mini meatballs. The recipe uses a combination of pork and beef, but I used 100% beef for dietary reasons. I also omitted the parmesan cheese from the recipe – both in the meatballs and soup itself. The meatballs are nicely flavoured with the herbs and I like the fresh bread crumbs in there, gives them a better texture. Also searing them before adding to the soup gives another layer of flavour and is worth the extra time.

This turned out so great. I love all the colours from the vegetables, especially all that spinach that gets added at the end. It was so fresh and flavourful. I also just love pasta in my soups so making this one was really a no-brainer.