Healthy & Easy Italian Wedding Soup Recipe — Zestful Kitchen (2024)

Add the best Italian Wedding Soup to the menu this week! This healthier Italian Wedding Soup recipe skips the pasta for fiber-rich white beans and features the most tender and flavorful pork and turkey meatballs. The best part—you only need 9 ingredients for this stellar dinner!

Why I Love this Easy Italian Wedding Soup

First and foremost, my goal in developing this recipe was to create a wholesome and delicious weeknight meal that required a short ingredient list and very little work. By making some intentional ingredient swaps I was able to develop a soup recipe that has great depth of flavor without a long simmer time or in-depth ingredient list.

For instance, instead of broth, this recipe relies on a gradual building and infusing of flavor in the broth. It starts with browning meat, sautéing onions, adding salt and garlic, and briefly simmering. This chicken and rice soup uses a similar method of building flavor with smart techniques and few ingredients.

Ingredients in Healthy Italian Wedding Soup

• Ground Meat. You can use whatever ground meat you prefer in this Italian Wedding Soup—ground chicken, ground turkey, ground pork, ground beef, ground italian sausage. Whatever you like and whatever you’ve got on hand will work swimmingly. I prefer a mix of ground pork and lean ground turkey—it strikes the perfect healthful balance while also having a great texture.
• Panko Bread Crumbs. If you can find it, whole-wheat Panko is ideal here. Regular Panko will also work, as will regular bread crumbs, but Panko has a nice texture and soaks up extra moisture which creates tender meatballs.
• Fresh parsley. Self explanatory, parsley adds freshness! Use chopped parsley in both the meatballs and the soup. A great example of how one ingredient can work double duty.
• Egg. An egg is important for minding the ground meat together for the meatballs.
• Garlic. Fresh garlic is the way to go (always)! This soup uses garlic in two ways—minced in the meatballs and chopped in the soup, because no one wants to mince garlic for days.
• Olive oil. I prefer the flavor of extra-virgin olive oil here, but you can use whatever olive oil you have on hand. EVOO is also delicious drizzled over the soup right before serving.
• Onion. Yellow onion works best here, but a white or sweet onion will also work. If you’re looking to add more veggies to the pot, you can also add diced fennel, carrot and/or celery with the onion.
• Kale. I prefer Tuscan kale here (also called Dinosaur or Lacinato). Regular kale will also work, as would any hardy green like Swiss chard or mustard greens.
• White beans. Cannellini (white kidney beans) are delicious in this easy Italian Wedding soup, but chickpeas will also work.

How to Make

1. To make the meatballs for this Italian wedding soup, mix together the ground meat, bread crumbs, parsley, egg, and garlic.
2. Brown the meatballs in batches in a large pot in oil until golden brown.
3. Remove meatballs and add onions to the pot. Cook the onions until softened, then stir in salt and garlic and cook briefly.
4. Add water and bring to a boil, simmer about 8 minutes to infuse with flavor.
5. Add meatballs, kale and beans to pot then stir in parsley to finish.

Variations on Italian Wedding Soup

• Add ditalini, orzo or acini de pepe instead of beans. After the water has been added and brought to a boil, add the pasta and cook until al dente, about 7 minutes.
• Keep the soup light and simple by using only ground turkey or ground chicken for the meatballs. Though for the best texture and flavor, I like to use half ground pork and half ground turkey.
• Swap the hardy kale for bitter greens such as escarole or frisse.
• Add a splash of dry white wine to the onions right before adding the water.
• Add diced fennel bulb to the onions while they soften. Finish the soup with chopped fennel fronds.
• Add grated Parmesan cheese to the meatballs or infusethe soup with a reserved Parmesan rind.

More Healthy Weeknight Soups to Try