This riff on Italian wedding soup swaps traditional beef and pork meatballs and teensy tiny pasta for turkey meatballs imbued with the lilt of lemon and nutty, chewy, outrageously satiating farro. The One and I swear you won’t feel slighted in the least.

david caricature

Why Our Testers Loved This

Our testers loved this healthy, satisfying soup that was easy enough to make on a weeknight. They were especially impressed by the flavor of the turkey meatballs and loved the brightness that lemon zest added.

We knew this turkey meatball soup recipe was a keeper when Anya L. shared this comment, “Everyone in my family enjoyed this turkey meatball soup, but the biggest compliment I received was on Monday morning when my daughter asked me to pack a thermos of this soup for lunch at school.”

What You’ll Need to Make This

  • Farro–This nutty, chewy grain adds plenty of oomph to the soup, but if you don’t have farro, another type of grain will work here, such as barley or rice.
  • Ground turkey--For best results and the most flavor, use a blend of white and dark meat.
  • Spinach–The spinach leaves are added right at the end so that they stay vibrant and are just wilted. If you prefer a heartier green, use mature spinach or kale. If using kale, let it simmer for a couple of minutes before serving.

How to Make This Recipe

  1. Cook the farro. Simmer the farro in water in a saucepan until tender. Drain and set aside.
  2. Make the turkey meatballs. Heat the oven to 375°F and line a rimmed baking sheet with oiled parchment. Combine the turkey, panko, Parmesan, egg, parsley, and lemon zest, and season well.
  3. Cook the meatballs. Roll the meatballs into tablespoon-sized balls, place on the baking sheet, and bake until cooked to an internal temperature of 165°F.
  4. Make the soup. In a Dutch oven, sauté the onion in oil, followed by the garlic. Add the stock and bring to a simmer, then stir in the farro and meatballs. Stir in the spinach and let it wilt.
  5. Serve. Season the soup with salt and pepper and serve immediately.

Common Questions

Why are my turkey meatballs tough?

Overmixing or overcooking your meatballs can make them dry and tough. When shaping them, you want to roll them firmly enough that they hold together, but don’t pack them tightly. Bake them until cooked to an internal temperature of 165°F, and simmer only briefly after adding them to the soup.

How do I stop my meatballs from falling apart in the soup?

If the meatballs fall apart, it’s due to a lack of a binder and/or improper shaping. Adding egg to the meatball mixture will help hold it together. Also, when shaping the meatballs for baking, press them firmly, making sure there are no seams or cracks.

What’s the difference between turkey meatball soup and Italian wedding soup?

Although they both contain meatballs and greens, the meatballs for Italian wedding soup are usually made with beef and pork, and the soup contains small pasta. This healthier version features turkey meatballs and farro, instead of pasta.

Helpful Tips

  • Make a double batch of meatballs and serve them with pasta or atop turkey rice noodle salad.
  • To check your meatball mixture for seasoning, pinch off a piece of the mixture and fry it in a skillet until cooked through. Taste and adjust seasoning if needed.
  • Leftover soup can be stored in a sealed container in the refrigerator for up to 5 days or frozen for up to 3 months. Reheat in the microwave or a saucepan over medium-low heat until warmed through. When reheating, adding a splash of stock or water might be necessary to thin the soup.

More Great Turkey Meatball Recipes

Write a Review

If you make this recipe, or any dish on LC, consider leaving a review, a star rating, and your best photo in the comments below. I love hearing from you.–David

A white enamel pot filled with turkey meatball soup.

Turkey Meatball Soup

5 / 6 votes
This turkey meatball soup with spinach is a healthier riff on Italian wedding soup and is made using mini meatballs made with turkey. Also includes farro, a nutty whole grain. A weeknight fix that’s satisfying, simple, and kid-friendly.
David Leite
CourseMains
CuisineAmerican
Servings6 servings
Calories410 kcal
Prep Time25 minutes
Cook Time35 minutes
Total Time1 hour

Ingredients 

For the farro

  • 1 cup uncooked farro, preferably pearled or quick-cooking
  • 4 cups cold water

For the turkey meatballs

  • Olive oil, for the baking sheet
  • 1 pound ground turkey, (preferably a mix of white and dark meat)
  • 6 tablespoons panko bread crumbs
  • 3 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 large egg, lightly beaten
  • 2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
  • Finely grated zest of 1/2 to 1 small lemon, preferably organic
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
  • Freshly ground black pepper

For the turkey meatball soup

  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 (6-ounce) yellow onion, chopped
  • 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
  • 6 cups homemade chicken stock or canned chicken broth
  • Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 4 to 6 ounces regular or baby spinach leaves

Instructions 

Cook the farro

  • Place the farro and water in a saucepan over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and gently simmer until tender, 20 to 30 minutes (or longer if not using quick-cooking farro).

Make the turkey meatballs

  • Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and slick the parchment with oil.
  • In a bowl, combine the turkey, panko, Parmesan, egg, parsley, and lemon zest. Season well with the salt and pepper.
  • Using 1 level tablespoon turkey mixture at a time, form small meatballs about 1 inch in diameter and place them on the prepared baking sheet. (You can make the meatballs slightly larger or smaller, depending on personal preference and whether you prefer to scoop up wee marble-size meatballs or want something larger that you can cut with your spoon.)
  • Bake the meatballs until they're cooked through and lightly golden, 9 to 12 minutes. (If you end up making smaller or larger meatballs, you'll need to allow them less or more time in the oven.)

Make the turkey meatball soup

  • In a soup pot or Dutch oven over medium heat, warm the oil. Add the onion and sauté until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another minute or so.
  • Add the stock, season with salt and pepper to taste, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and gently simmer for 10 minutes to infuse the stock with flavor.
  • Drain the farro and add it to the soup along with the turkey meatballs. Let everything warm through, about 2 minutes.
  • If using regular spinach leaves, toss in the spinach and wait until the leaves wilt, about 2 minutes. If using baby spinach leaves, turn off the heat and either toss the baby spinach into the pot and turn off the heat or simply add the spinach to individual bowls and ladle the broth and meatballs and farro over the top.
  • Taste and season with more salt and pepper, if desired. Serve immediately.

Notes

  1. Double your meatballs–Make a double batch of meatballs and serve them with pasta.
  2. Check your seasoning–To check your meatball mixture for seasoning, pinch off a piece of the mixture and fry it in a skillet until cooked through. Taste and adjust seasoning if needed.
  3. Storage and reheating–Leftover soup can be stored in a sealed container in the refrigerator for up to 5 days or frozen for up to 3 months. Reheat in the microwave or a saucepan over medium-low heat until warmed through. When reheating, adding a splash of stock or water might be necessary to thin the soup.
Healthy Dish of the Day Cookbook

Adapted From

Williams-Sonoma Healthy Dish of the Day

Buy On Amazon

Nutrition

Serving: 1 portionCalories: 410 kcalCarbohydrates: 43 gProtein: 33 gFat: 12 gSaturated Fat: 3 gMonounsaturated Fat: 6 gTrans Fat: 0.02 gCholesterol: 82 mgSodium: 1325 mgFiber: 6 gSugar: 5 g

Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.

Tried this recipe?Mention @leitesculinaria or tag #leitesculinaria!
Recipe © 2014 Kate McMillan. Photo © 2014 Erin Kunkel. All rights reserved.

Recipe Testers’ Reviews

This is a nice little soup which, happily, repurposed well as an office lunch. For me, there are two things that really set this recipe apart: 1. The quality of the stock you use, and 2. How you treat the spinach in the last step.

After I combined the ingredients and the soup was simmering as the recipe describes, I placed the baby spinach leaves in the bottom of my bowl and ladled the rest on top. By the time I got to the table with our plates, the spinach was perfectly softened but still bright green and delicious. The greens brightened the soup and complemented the toothy farro perfectly.

I found that the recipe yielded 20 meatballs that were about 1 1/4 inches each. At this size, you can cut the meatball in half in your bowl with your spoon while eating.

The bake time for this meatball size was 20 minutes. Some might dispute that the meat was cooked at 15 minutes, and yes, perhaps it was, but I wanted a bit more browning on the meatballs to add a nice depth to the finished product. (I highly recommend this. The deviation from the recipe had no negative consequences for the meatball tenderness.)

The farro cooked in 20 minutes to just slightly beyond al dente, which is my preference for this grain.

What a lovely marriage of health and flavor! Though I had my doubts about this turkey meatball soup, it actually had great flavor. That it’s also highly nutritious and full of warm comfort are just added benefits.

I followed the recipe directions and made mini meatballs of 1 tablespoon mixture each. I ended up with 24 small meatballs, which were nicely browned after 12 minutes in the oven.

I made the farro as directed on the package, simmering the grain for 25 minutes, which was perfect. I cooked the farro, meatballs, and spinach in the soup for only 1 minute because, as I expected, the spinach wilted in about 45 seconds.

I knew this recipe would be good when I liked the turkey meatballs and hadn’t made the soup yet.

The turkey meatballs have a pleasant lightness with a bit of a lemon zing from the zest. The overall lightness of this meatball soup had my husband calling this a summer soup.

I used ground turkey thighs and found that the meatballs were moist and tender. I used a tablespoon ice-cream scoop and ended up making about 40 meatballs. The 12 minutes of cooking time was spot-on for me. The meatballs don’t get a lot of color but are still cooked through.

This recipe is straightforward except for a potentially tricky part with the farro.

The next time I make this, I’ll cook the meatballs (and likely the farro) the day before, so the actual soup-making part is faster and more appropriate for a weeknight. I’ll just add the meatballs and farro a bit earlier than the spinach.

If this soup is all you’re having for the meal, you can get 4 to 6 servings out of this recipe.

For something that’s fairly easy to throw together, this soup yields a complex result with all the ingredients working well together. The brightness from the lemon was very pronounced in the meatballs, and it flavored the entire soup. I used half white and half dark turkey for my meatballs.

The farro and spinach were wonderful. Everything worked together very well.

Being that the meatballs were going to be in soup, I wanted them to be fairly small. I formed meatballs with 1 tablespoon of meat mixture. That was the perfect size. After searing a “tester” meatball, which is something that I always do to check for seasoning, I was rewarded with 27 meatballs for my soup.

When I make this soup recipe again—and I will be making this again—I’ll use more water to cook the farro. It just didn’t have enough room in the pot to cook freely.

The other thing that I would change would be to cook the onion for a while and then add the garlic. I find that onion often needs a “head start,” or the garlic can get a bit too brown.

After sitting overnight, the farro absorbed quite a bit of the stock, making the soup thicker than it was originally. This recipe yielded dinner for two people on two different nights and a small bowl for lunch another day.

This turkey meatball soup is a great low-fat but satisfying version of Italian wedding soup. Using farro instead of pasta keeps the carbs low while upping the fiber—another plus! Poultry meatballs can sometimes lack a little oomph, but the lemon zest in this recipe really brightens the flavor, and the Parmesan cheese adds just enough richness.

Keeping the word “small” in mind, I scooped and leveled the turkey mixture rather than measuring a heaping tablespoon for each meatball, and I got 36 meatballs total. The timing for the meatballs (12 minutes) was spot-on.

The only thing I would change next time is the spinach. I’ll probably use baby kale leaves, which are a bit sturdier and would stay greener longer in the hot soup. I wouldn’t salt and pepper the soup right after the stock is added. I would wait until the meatballs are added, as they may add enough flavor to the soup. I would add the meatballs and farro to the soup (hold the spinach at this point), let it come back to a boil, then add the greens. I took the soup off the heat as soon as the spinach went in, gave the whole thing a stir, and set it aside for 2 minutes before serving.

This turkey meatball soup was the perfect bowl of comfort on a cold winter night. The meatballs on their own were outstanding. I adored the subtle lemon flavor and would be interested in trying other recipes incorporating these meatballs in a non-soup form.

The meatball mixture yielded 24 meatballs that were 1 1/2 inches in diameter, and they were perfectly cooked at 14 minutes (still a little underdone at 12 minutes). I loved the nutty flavor of the farro.

This turkey meatball soup reminds me so much of Italian wedding soup, with the farro standing in for tiny pasta such as orzo or ditalini and turkey meatballs replacing the beef and pork meatballs. The spinach is standard in both dishes. That said, this is a nice variation and makes for a hearty and warming meal.

For this type of soup, the turkey meatballs should fit on a soup spoon and be consumed in one bite. I used a tablespoon cookie scoop, and the meatballs were about 1 1/4 inches in diameter—a bit larger than I would have preferred. The yield was 45 meatballs. 

Be careful not to over-bake them since turkey meatballs can get very dry and tough with too much cooking. 12 minutes was just about right for my meatball size.

The recipe makes about three quarts of soup, serving six easily.

One suggestion would be to cut down significantly on the amount of lemon zest. I only used two teaspoons zest, and the lemon flavor was a bit more pronounced than I would have liked.

I’m having trouble describing what I liked about this turkey meatballs soup without using all those overused words: whole-grain, healthful, one-bowl, clean eating, rustic…forget it. Just call it a weeknight WIN.

Even the shopping was easy: ground turkey comes in 1-lb packages, one package of farro was 1 cup, and my bundle of spinach was 6 ounces (after first adding 4 ounces, we threw in the rest). If I wasn’t using frozen homemade stock, I’d have grabbed 2 of those cartons for just the right amount.

The timing was spot-on too. I tried outsmarting the recipe by starting the farro while rolling the meatballs, but I should’ve trusted the recipe.

The only adjustment I’d make here is the amount of lemon zest in the meatballs. Though it was nice to have them play the highly-seasoned role in this mild soup, we thought the zest of a whole lemon was too overwhelming. Next time I’d cut it back to 1/2 lemon at the most, or eliminate it, and add some crushed fennel seeds, crushed pepper flakes, Italian herbs, and even za’atar.

This soup made a couple one-bowl dinners for the two of us. I guessed the farro would soak up the soup overnight, so I added 2 cups of broth to the leftovers. The next night, the rewarmed soup was just as good, though the spinach wasn’t as vibrantly green. We threw in a bunch of chopped parsley to make up for it.

Speaking of parsley, the topping possibilities to take this guy to the next level are endless. A shot of hot sauce, a swirl of pesto, a sprinkle of za’atar, grated pecorino or Parmesan or even feta cheese… I think we’ll be making this one again soon.

I think I’ll try to cook the farro in the broth (onion, garlic, then broth, add the farro and the amount of water, cover, and cook for 20 minutes). And I’ll use za’atar in my meatballs and garnish with feta. I can’t wait.




About David Leite

I count myself lucky to have received three James Beard Awards for my writing as well as for Leite’s Culinaria. My work has also appeared in The New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, Saveur, Bon Appétit, Gourmet, Food & Wine, Yankee, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and more.


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Recipe Rating




6 Comments

  1. 5 stars
    These are some tasty meatballs! The soup’s good too but I’m adding the meatballs to my recipe database to have with noodles as an entree.

  2. 5 stars
    The Zatar and feta sounds like a lovely winning combination. What a beautiful Mediterranean addition to a healthy soup. The farro could be kept separate and ladled into the leftover soup so it wouldn’t absorb all the broth. Will definitely try it again with baby organic kale. ?

    1. You’re very welcome, Steve. We love soup, too. Love to hear what you think of the recipe…