Italian Wedding Soup with Spinach

Everyone loves soup. There are so many different soups that if you don't like one you could try another. There are cream soups, vegetable soups, chicken noodle, chicken rice, beef with vegetables, tomato soup, chowders, seafood soup, so on and so forth.

This soup is a little different because even if you can't get your children to eat soup, they will eat this soup because of the little meat balls. You know all those commercials on TV where you see children eating soup and loving it? Well, remember that is just a TV commercial and not necessarily true. In the real world, they don't all love soup, trust me, I know. This is the one soup, they will eat. They won't even mind eating the spinach which is a plus for the vitamins it provides for them.

You can make a big batch and freeze half for another time. Great for those busy days when you don't have time to make a decent dinner.

It does have an Italian origin so, Buono Appetite!

You can use any chicken soup recipe you like. As in the picture above, you can see I have celery, carrots, onions and chicken in a pot of water along with seasonings which gets strained after its cooked. I do have the recipe for the soup in my hub with chicken soup.

If you don't want to go through the trouble of making your own soup, you can use a couple of large cans of chicken soup in the cans. It does save a lot of time and some of them are really good. I had an aunt who use to do that.

You will need a whole bag of spinach. It will look like a lot but when spinach cooks down it shrinks to at least one fourth. If you buy the bag where it says already washed, that will save time too, you will have to chop it up before putting it into the soup.

I use spinach, but a lot of people use any green leafy vegetable like Swiss Chard, if you like.

After the soup is strained and back into the pot or after you put the canned soup broth in the pot and heated it, add the meatballs and very small chicken noodles of your choice. I used Ditalini. The little tiny round soup noodles are also a good choice. Long noodles or rice is not usually used in this soup. Add the spinach last and cook for a couple of minutes until the spinach is cooked, which will take only about 6 or 7 minutes.

After plating your soup, garnish with a little more grating cheese. (This, of course, is optional).

Is it really served at Italian weddings? Good question!

According to Sheri Bettis:

Legend states that it was a traditional meal at Italian weddings. Some say it was used as "energy fortification" for the couple's wedding night activities.

As with most legends, this is false. Italians do not serve this soup at their weddings.

The background of this soup originally knows as Minestra Maritata;

Minestra is Italian for soup (at one time referred to the first course);

Maritata is Italian for marriage (between pork and vegetables).

Made with pork and vegetables in a broth (beef is now more of a popular choice), the process of making this soup was creative and fun as putting pork or beef meatballs into a chicken broth and marrying them to a green vegetable. Hence the name Italian Wedding Soup!

It was originally made with scraps of pork meat, kind of a poor man's soup and yet now, it is hailed brilliantly delicious and made with finer ingredients. So now we can enjoy Italian Wedding Soup with Spinach or other greens.