Tortellini and Italian Sausage Soup: this hearty soup is a real crowd pleaser with tender pasta, loads of veggies, and delicious Italian sausage. Easy and sure to become a family favourite.
![Tortellini and Italian sausage soup.](http://www.lifeisaparty.ca/wp-uploads/2016/02/tortellini-and-Italian-sausage-soup-1.1-2.jpg)
It’s mid-February and snowy in our neck of the woods. It's soup season. This time of year, there’s nothing better than a hot bowl of homemade soup, and this Tortellini and Italian Sausage Soup is a real family favourite. I love to make a double batch of this and have it for a few days. It’s so good served with some nice fresh bread on a chilly day. If you're looking for a hearty and delicious soup, this one is perfect.
This soup has a rich tomato broth base, and is filled with fresh vegetables, flavorful sausage, and tender cheese tortellini. Your whole family will love it. It's a complete meal in a bowl and pure comfort food.
Italian Sausage
We love to add italian sausage to this soup. It's so flavorful and meaty, and adds so much to this soup. We remove the casing from the sausage before frying it to create the ground sausage meat pieces.
We usually use mild Italian sausage for this soup. The sweet Italian sausage is a great kid friendly option, also great for anyone that doesn't like too much spice. This pork sausage is full of flavor. If you do like spicy foods, you can use hot Italian sausage for this recipe instead, and /or add some red pepper flakes to the soup for some more heat.
Tortellini
This soup is made with cheese-filled tortellini pasta. The cheese flavor is a wonderful addition to the soup. I usually use frozen cheese tortellini for this soup, but you can use fresh tortellini if you prefer. The fresh cheese tortellini will cook faster than the frozen, so check the instructions on the package for cooking times. If I make a very large batch of this soup, I sometimes only add half of the tortellini at the beginning. The tortellini floats to the top when it's cooked, so it's easy to serve it all on the first serving. You can then cook cheese tortellini more separately to add it the next day. If the pasta sits in the soup overnight it does sometimes become a little oversaturated with broth, and gets soggy.
Tomato Broth
The broth gets it tomato flavor from tomato paste and canned tomatoes. Use diced tomatoes so that they're well distributed in the broth. Combined with chicken stock and dry spices of salt, black pepper, garlic salt, and Italian herbs this delicious broth is full of flavor. If you're on a low sodium diet, feel free to substitute low sodium chicken broth for the regular, and leave out the salt and garlic salt in the recipe.
Vegetables
This soup is full of veggies. We've added carrots, zucchini, and corn for a great combination, along with onion and garlic for flavor. We've used frozen corn for this soup, but if you're making it in late summer and corn is in season you can add fresh corn cut off the cob.
Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 lbs Italian sausage
- med. onion chopped
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 3 med. carrots chopped
- 1 can 28 oz. canned diced tomatoes
- 8 cups chicken stock
- 2 tablespoon Italian seasoning
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ¾ teaspoon fresh ground pepper
- 2 small zucchini chopped
- 2 cups frozen corn
- 1 package 350 gram fresh or frozen cheese tortellini
Instructions
- Remove the casing from the Italian sausage, and fry in a large soup pot over medium-high heat, Break up the sausage as it cooks into bite-sized pieces.
- Once the sausage is browned, add in the chopped onion and garlic, and cook until the onion is transparent.
- Add in the chopped carrots (I do rounds, cut in half again), the chicken stock, diced tomatoes, water, Italian seasoning, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, and simmer with a lid for about 20 min.
- Add in the chopped zucchini (again cut in rounds, and half again), and simmer for another 10 min.
Lastly, add in your tortellini and frozen corn and cook according to the package directions -fresh is about 10 min., frozen is longer. Once the tortilla is tender the soup is ready to enjoy.
Nutrition
Store any leftover Italian sausage tortellini soup in a airtight container in the refrigerator.
This soup is best the day it is cooked. Stored in the fridge, the pasta can absorb the liquid from the soup and become soggy. If you are making a large amount with leftovers, try only adding half of the pasta whey you cook it. The pasta will rise to the top and be easy to eat in the first sitting. The next day cook some tortellini separately and add it to the soup so that it isn't soggy. If you still have leftover soup, store the cooked pasta that's been drained in a separate container in the fridge and add it to the other leftover soup before reheating each portion to avoid the soggy pasta problem.
If your kids love pasta as much as mine do…and I can only make spaghetti so often…then this flavorful tortellini soup is the perfect meal for your family, and it's packed with veggies and good stuff too. It's easy enough to make even on busy weeknights and the perfect meal to look forward to after a long day. This tortellini soup recipe is sure to be a family favorite.
With a hot bowl of homemade tortellini and Italian sausage soup on a cold winter day, life really is a party!
More Recipe Inspiration
You might also like our Unstuffed Zucchini recipe here.
Also check out our Gnocchi with Mushrooms and Italian Sausage recipe here.
You might also enjoy our Easy Lasagna recipe here.
Neelam says
This looks delicious! The perfect winter soup, I can't wait to try it! Thanks for sharing.
xx
Neelam
http://patternsandprosecco.com/
dnr says
Hope you enjoy it, thanks for stopping by Neelam.
Dannyelle
Ichi Tokyo says
Thanks for a simple, tasty recipe!