Fall is here! And that means making lots and lots of soup. One of Phillip Wiglesworth’s favorite fall recipes is his mother’s creamy tortellini sausage soup. Over the years, he perfected her recipe and tweaked a few things to hopefully make this soup your family’s fall favorite, too!
Picking Sausage
Depending on your tastes, you can experiment with different types of sausage in the tortellini soup. Using hot ground sausage will give your soup a bit of a kick. But if spicy soups aren’t your thing, mild or sweet sausage tastes just as good!
Grease or Oil?
This recipe tells you to reserve some of the sausage grease for sauteing the vegetables. If you don’t like greasy soups, however, you don’t have to do this. You can substitute a couple tablespoons of olive oil (or your favorite kind of cooking oil) instead. You can even rinse the sausage in a colander if you really don’t like greasy foods.
What kind of stock is best?
While the recipe calls for chicken stock, feel free to experiment with others, like vegetable and beef. Phillip Wiglesworth likes to use a mixture of chicken and beef stock for his tortellini soups. Experiment while you cook, and find the combination you like best!
Which greens should I use?
The simple answer is you can use whichever ones you’d like. Spinach and baby kale taste delicious in this soup, but so do collard greens. It’s really up to you and what you enjoy. You could even add more vegetables, aside from the onions and carrots in the recipe. Have fun with it!
What kind of milk should I use?
It depends how creamy you want the soup to be. If you want a lighter soup, you might want to try 1% or 2% low-fat milk. If creamy is your thing, and you love thick, rich soups, you can use whole milk. You can also try half-and-half or heavy cream for an even creamier soup.
Keeping your Tortellini Soup Leftovers
If you don’t end up eating all of the soup in one sitting, you can keep the leftovers up to three days. Make sure you keep them in a sealed container and refrigerate them.
Over those three days, you might notice that the soup absorbed most of the broth. If that’s the case, feel free to add a bit more broth to the soup when you reheat it!
This creamy soup is perfect for fall, warm, comforting, and nutritious!
- 1.25 lbs ground Italian sausage
- 1 white onion peeled and diced
- 2 large carrots peeled and diced
- 4 garlic cloves minced
- 1/4 cup flour
- 6 cups chicken tock
- 1 package cheese tortellini (10 oz.)
- 5 oz greens of your choice (ex. spinach, baby kale, collards)
- 2 cups milk
- salt and pepper to taste
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Cook Italian sausage in large stock pot over medium-high heat until browned and cooked through. Sausage should crumble easily.
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Transfer sausage to a separate plate and set aside. Reserve two tablespoons of grease in the pan and discard the rest.
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Stir in onions and carrots and saute for 4-5 minutes, until onions are soft and translucent. Stir occasionally. Add in garlic and saute 1-2 minutes, until fragrant.
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Stir in flour until it evenly coats the onions and carrots.
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Gradually add in chicken stock, stirring to combine. Cook until the soup begins to simmer. Then reduce to medium-low and simmer for 5 minutes.
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Stir in cooked sausage, tortellini, greens, and milk. Simmer an additional 4-5 minutes, or until tortellini is al dente.
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Taste and season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.
