THE ABSOLUTE BEST ITALIAN TORTELLINI SOUP

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If you know anything about me, you know how much I love soup.  When cold weather comes one of the first things I fix is a big pot of some type of soup.  Nothing quite like a steaming bowl of goodness to warm your soul.

 It is so much fun to dump a lot of ingredients in a pot and make something that is warm and yummy to fill your cold tummy.  For me, soup is something that should be gourmet.  Use good quality and as many fresh ingredients as possible.  That is one of the reasons I love to can stuff.  Believe me my home canned tomatoes, marinara or stock is a lot better than anything you can purchase at a store.  However, if you do not can I can not say this enough, buy good quality ingredients when you are making soup.  Honestly, you can taste the difference. 

 I have always enjoyed cooking soup with some type of pasta included in the pot.  Tortellini is a perfect pasta to use when making soup.  It is hardy and can take the liquid well.  Tortellini is a ring-shaped pasta that is filled with meat, mushrooms and/or cheese.  Tortellini can be purchased either dried, refrigerated or frozen. 

 This particular soup is an Italian style tortellini soup.  I love Italian food too.  So by combining soup and Italian, I think I am in heaven.  Or a maybe a little piece of heaven. 

 When I made this soup I thought I had some Italian sausage downstairs in one of the freezers but I could not find it so I used a pack of homemade breakfast sausage and made it into Italian sausage.  Click here to find out how to make Italian sausage from breakfast sausage.

As usual, I started off with preheating my Dutch oven.  Added some oil once it was hot and browned my Italian sausage and cooked my onion.  I added some minced garlic for about 2 more minutes till fragrant.  

 
I normally would use home canned tomatoes because they give the soup a better flavor but today I used a 28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes.  


I did add some good quality home canned chicken bone broth.  


Added some more Italian seasoning and allowed this to cook for an hour or so.


For this recipe, I had a bag of dried tortellini that I thought would be really tasty.  When I add pasta to a soup I pre-cook it and add it to the soup either at the end of per bowl.


I used a bag of fresh spinach that I did a rough chop on. I added that at the very end so that it would not wilt down too much.


ITALIAN TORTELLINI SOUP WITH SPINACH

Ingredients
  • 1 pound Italian Sausage 
  • 1 onion diced
  • 3 to 4 cloves of garlic minced
  • 28 ounces diced or crushed tomatoes
  • 1 quart of chicken broth
  • 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
  • 1 package of tortellini 
  • 1 8 ounce bag of fresh spinach
Directions
  • Pre-heat your pot and add a couple tablespoons of olive oil.
  • Add the Italian sausage and onion.  Brown the sausage for minutes.
  • Add minced garlic and cook for an additional 2 minutes.
  • Add tomatoes, broth, and Italian seasoning to the sausage.  Cooking for at least an hour on medium-low heat.  The longer the better. 
  • Add roughly chopped spinach about 5 minutes before serving.
  • Cook tortellini and add with spinach or put tortellini in each bowl and cover with soup.


The great thing about this soup is you can buy any type tortellini you want.  You can buy cheese, mushroom or a combination.  You can also use hot Italian sausage or mild.  You can add bell pepper.  Spicy it up some more by adding a bit more crushed red pepper flakes.  You could use kale.  Spinach and kale both are excellent in soups.  

 I think it is essential to cook this low and slow.  Really with almost any soup, it is good to take your time because this really allows the flavors to mingle and develop into a more delicious soup.  

Winter has really just started.  We have a few cold snaps here in my neck of the woods and even a record-breaking snowstorm which occurred prior to winter.  It was rather lovely.  And yes I made soup.  Can not remember which one but I made soup.  

 ENJOY!!! 

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