Italian wedding soup | chicken meatballs & homemade stock
826,096
Published 2021-12-16
**RECIPE, FEEDS 8-10**
5 lb (2.27kg) bone-in chicken thighs and/or legs (I think thighs are better)
1-2 lb (454-907g) dark greens (I like curly kale)
1 lb (454g) carrots
1/2 lb (227g) small dried pasta shape (I like Israeli couscous)
2 onions
2 stalks celery (very optional)
4-5 garlic cloves
half a bottle of white wine (if you don't use this you might need more water in the soup and you'll want to put in a little lemon juice or vinegar at the end to taste)
1-2 eggs (depending on if you want to clarify the stock)
pecorino or parmesan cheese
a few bay leaves
fresh herbs for the meatballs and for garnish (I like parsley)
dried herbs (I like oregano, thyme, sage and garlic powder)
olive oil
breadcrumbs (I like panko)
salt
pepper
Cut as much meat off the bones as you reasonably can and set aside. To make the stock, put the bones and skin in a big pot along with an onion (cut in half), a couple carrots and a couple celery stalks. Put the uncovered pot in the oven and brown all the stuff under the broiler/grill, taking it out to stir it a few times. (You can just fry the stuff on the stovetop instead until you've got some color on everything.)
Get everything fully submerged in water, cover and cook in the oven at 200ºF/95ºC overnight or up to 24 hours. If you need stock faster, do it at 400ºF/200ºC for 2-3 hours. (You could just simmer it on the stovetop instead of doing it in the oven.) Strain all the solids out of the stock and discard. If you want to clarify the stock, separate out two egg whites, beat them with a little cold water, stir them into the stock and simmer for about 10 minutes. A raft will form at the top that traps impurities — skim or strain it off. (This is also a good time to skim off fat, if you want to. I don't.)
To make the meatballs, blitz your reserved chicken meat in a food processor until just before it forms a smooth paste. (You can mince meat by hand with a knife, though it takes awhile.) Put the meat in a big mixing bowl. Crack in one egg, or put in your two reserved egg yolks if you clarified the stock. Grate in a giant pile of cheese. Pour in some breadcrumbs (I shoot for meatballs that are about 1/4 breadcrumbs by volume). Season aggressively with dried herbs and pepper. Season conservatively with salt (you can add more in a sec). Put in a handful of roughly chopped fresh herbs. Pour in a big glug of olive oil.
Mix everything up then cook a tiny sample to taste for seasoning (I just microwaved it). Add more salt if needed. Roll into meatballs. You can either poach them directly in the soup, or you can brown them in a pan with olive oil before putting them in. (I recommend browning them in a nonstick pan, since chicken meatballs are very delicate and likely to break if they stick.)
To finish the soup, pour the white wine into the stock, drop in the bay leaves and season it conservatively with salt. If you have a leftover cheese rind, you could put that in now to flavor the soup. Chop your remaining carrots and onion into small pieces and put them in the stock. Put in the meatballs (browned or not). Put in the pasta. Simmer the soup until the carrots and onions are soft and the meatballs are cooked through, about half an hour. (It can hold all day like this.) Eventually take out the bay leaves and the cheese rind.
While you're simmering the soup, peel and chop the garlic, prep the greens by trimming out any tough stems and cutting the leaves into bite-size pieces. About 10 minutes before you want to eat, stir the leaves into the soup and cook until wilted but still green. If the soup needs more liquid, add some more water and/or wine. If you're not using wine, stir in a squeeze of lemon juice or a splash of vinegar. Taste the broth and add more salt or acid if it needs it. Stir in the garlic right before you want to eat. Garnish the soup with fresh herbs in the bowl. Leftovers freeze and thaw great.
All Comments (21)
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"I have my doubts about bay leaves, but..." I think it would be interesting to see a whole video about them, the various uses, and maybe a blind taste test with Lauren like you did for the various methods of garlic preparation to show whether or not it makes a big difference in different dishes.
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The "mother and child reunion" caught me off guard and made my day
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Let’s see, in this video we got ✅An Italian American classic ✅Simplified ✅With the employment of that top element ✅Featuring an adorable comment from Lauren and ✅Half a bottle of white wine Yeah, I’d say this was an Adam Ragusea video alright.
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7:55 adam got so excited to use the white wine, his voice cracked
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I love this channel because how realistic he is about stuff. He needs to make a video comparing store broth and homeade broth. and then testing to see if theres little additions to store broth you can do to make it close to homade
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This has been my favorite soup since I was a child. Brings back memories.
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5:59 Mother and child reunion 😂😂
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For Christmas season this year, I think we need an video on making eggnog
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Beautiful recipe, thanks Adam. Regarding bay leaves: I live in downtown L.A where there are tons of great Mexican and Latin American products in the grocery store. I started buying what I assume is "Mexican bay leaf", although it could just be regular bay leaves that just happen to be sold in the same aisle as Mexican spices. I get an amazing astringent note from these things and have started using them regularly in all my heartier soups and stews. So if anyone out there is thinking "bay leaves: what's the point?" I would encourage you to try the Mexican/Latin American kind.
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"Mother-and-child reuinion" Is that foreshadowing for an oyakodon episode? I'd love to see you try your hand at that, especially since the dish has some significance in my family.
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My grandma made her wedding soup with both tiiiiny meatballs and chopped up chicken. Also she made these little chunks of baked cheese that were like fun little sponges spread through the soup. My aunt and cousin have carried down the recipe perfectly, thank goodness.
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Replicated with some twists, tastes great! To make meatballs more tender and less fragile, 1 or 2 tablespoon of starch can be added. Stiring the mince in one direction for 1 or 2 min until it's sticky also helps with the texture. Those are some technique when making Chinese style meatball.
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6:00 min... puts eggs into the minced bowl of chicken and says "mother and child reunion". I'm dying!!! LOLOLOLOL
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Hey, Adam! I have been watching your videos for a long long time and I have been enjoying them quite a bit! I am from Bulgaria, which is an Eastern European country, and I know that you are very curious and intelligent, so... We have this recipe here, that is something very close to this soup. You start by sweating onions in a big pot, then adding carrots and a little bit of red pepper. You then proceed to add stock or water and make vegetable stock. Maybe put in a bay leave or two. You wait for about an hour for the souo to simmer. You form meatballs maybe three times smaller than yours from 60/40 beef to pork grind meat, only seasoned with salt and pepper and you roll them in flour. You put them in the soup, adding thyme and other herbs you might like and wait for them to get ready. When all ingredients are almost ready you put Vermicelli in then you make a thickener with yogurt and eggs. You put the thickener in the soup, while off the gas, while stirring. Then you put some chopped parsley and lemon juice. One of my favorite soups of all time. By the way, amazing chicken stock recipe!!!
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11:15 I have been laughing for like 5 minutes because I just realized that he meant “sick” as in “under the weather” for softer meatballs. I thought for a while that he was saying like “sick in the head,” for people who just prefer softer meatballs. Delicious soup, though.
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i love how when he drops things out of shot he just adds a couple frames with the word "bye" where they fell. its a bit of comedy that brightens my day
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Loved that final shot of Adam dumping the rest of the wine into his bowl of soup!
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The white wine is back! As a long-time Ragusea watcher, this makes me very happy.
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I just made this per your directions. Used mushrooms instead of celery and lentils instead of pasta since my wife has a gluten allergy. It was fantastic. Lentils obviously made it a thicker, darker soup, but it was lovely nonetheless!
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This is amazing. This dish is the first thing I learned to make. My stepmother is pure Sicilian and proud of cooking and taught me to make many traditional Sicilian dishes. I love seeing someone else make it. It’s a little different that what she taught me but basically the same.
