Healthified High Protein Italian Wedding Soup
I made this soup and posted it on the blog about 7-8 years ago, and I am STILL obsessed with it. It’s nearing the end of summer which means one thing: FALL!! Fall means many things:
Pumpkin spice
Sweatshirt weather
Football
Leaves changing
and last but not least…..SOUP!!
This soup is the best I’ve ever made. It’s flavorful, has vegetables, has tons of protein, and is a great comfort food without being too heavy.
Here are all of the ingredients you will need for your soup:
One package 93/7 lean ground turkey
One package hot Italian turkey sausage (5 links), meat removed from casing
1/2c freshly grated parmesan cheese
1/2c Panko bread crumbs
One egg
Salt and pepper
EVOO (extra virgin olive oil)
1/2 to 1 yellow onion, chopped
Two large carrots, peeled and chopped small
Crushed garlic (or just a couple of minced cloves of fresh garlic)
Fresh Italian parsley, chopped
Fresh rosemary
Fresh thyme (optional)
4 to 6 oz of small pasta such as orzo or stallone (see picture)
12oz bag of frozen chopped spinach
3 boxes of chicken broth (or 2 boxes broth + 1 box water mixed with 2 packets of Collagen bone broth - adds protein, collagen, and flavor)
This soup is a HUGE crowd pleaser!!
This recipe may look complex, but it’s really not at all. The most tedious part is rolling the meatballs, which is still easy. To make those, all you do is remove the hot turkey sausage links from their casing by squeezing the meat out.
Combine that meat with the regular ground turkey, parmesan cheese, Panko breadcrumbs, egg, a couple of teaspoons of chopped Italian parsley, salt and pepper, then using your hands, mix together until uniform.
Then roll into small balls and line up onto a cookie sheet until they’re all done. The easiest way to keep them from sticking to your hands while doing this is to keep your hands wet with a little bit of water the whole time. I also use vinyl gloves to keep the turkey out of my nails ;) IYKYK.
Then, once you’re done with all of your meatballs (yes, there will be A LOT of them!) start a large skillet (or use your dutch oven you’re going to put your soup in) on medium, add a couple of swirls of EVOO along with the onion and garlic, and cook for about 5 minutes. Add meatballs and cook through. While the meatballs are cooking, you can start the rest of the soup.
Your pan/pot will be very full. You may even have to cook the meatballs in two rounds.
After chopping the carrots, parsley (you will need about 1/2 cup), rosemary, and thyme, add them to the pot along with the broth, water, and bone broth (and meatballs if you cooked in a separate pan). Let the mixture heat up and simmer for about 15-20 minutes until the carrots are cooked through to your liking.
I found those cute little noodles above at Sprouts. I really like them because they have 5g of protein and 2g of fiber per serving and are made with brown rice flour. They also remind me of chicken and stars from when I was a kid, which is my favorite comfort soup.
By all means, this recipe just needs a small noodle, such as an orzo or something comparable. Whatever you can find will work. Go ahead and add the noodles (I used about 4oz) and allow soup to continue simmering. Mine called for 10 minutes of cooking time, so I let them cook for 8-9 minutes. Then, I added the frozen spinach which will cool down the soup and slow the cooking of the noodles. Remove from heat. I added some salt and pepper to taste, and that was it! Soup was done!
Finished product (drool.....)
Everything is better with my favorite sunflowers ◡̈
I hope you enjoyed this one! Let me know if you end up making it yourself, and how it turns out! The beauty of these recipes if you can do whatever you want with them! Change any ingredients to things you like! I hope you guys have an awesome day!
Happy Trails!
Stacey and Jade
