I have been on a major soup kick lately with all of this cold and gloomy weather. You can make them hearty or you can keep them really light and simple and with my ever changing appetite, it works. Making a big pot of soup is also inexpensive and easy to make in bulk so it’s perfect for big families or for portioning and freezing for future dinners.

When it comes to soup, I don’t discriminate. I use chicken, pork, beef, veggies and just about anything else I can get my hands on (besides fruit because let’s be serious… GROSS). I have recently posted my Chicken Corn Chowder Soup and Chicken Veggie Soup but this one is a little different. I went with an Italian inspired soup and used tortellini and spicy Italian sausage. This recipe is great because if you don’t like pork sausage, you can swap it for chicken or beef sausage. The flavor will obviously be different but certainly not completely different.

Before you can even start this recipe, you have to know how to properly skin sausage. There is a “casing” around the actual beef and you can’t have it ground up until you remove the skin. You have to make a tiny incision on the top or bottom of the sausage link and tear back the skin. Or you can run the sausage under warm water and the skin will start to shrivel up and come right off. Here is a video to show you if you are not sure! Skinning Sausage

Okay…. so what do you need? For 6-8 servings

4 cups of tortellini
1 1/2 lbs of ground spicy italian sausage links with skin removed (or sausage of choice) *refer to above link to see how to take skin off of sausage links)
1 28oz can of crushed tomatoes
3 cups of lead spinach
1 32oz vegetable stock (you could use beef, this is just a healthier option)
4 garlic cloves minced
1 medium yellow onion diced
1 green bell pepper diced
1 tbsp each of onion powder and dried oregano
Grated parm for garnish
Salt and pepper to taste
3-4 tsp of olive oil
1 tsp crushed red pepper optional!

Flat leaf spinach. It should be nice and bright green. Spinach cooks down to nothing so there is no need to chop

I chose to use an organic veggie stock. You could certainly use beef but this is a healthier option with all of the other flavors

3 cheese tortellini, you can use whatever kind you would like

How to make this delicious soup

In a large soup pot, saute your onions and pepper with your 3 tsp of olive oil over medium high heat. Cook until tender then add your ground sausage until fully cooked.
Add your minced garlic and sauté another 3-5 minutes until fragrant.
Add your veggie stock, tomato sauce and all of your seasonings. Mix it all up good. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to medium-low and let simmer with a lid for about 20 minutes until soup thickens slightly.
After 20 minutes, add your spinach and tortellini. Tortellini should be room temperature, NOT frozen. Let cook for another 10 minutes on medium heat. Remove from heat after so tortellini stops cooking.
Garnish with cheese or scallions and serve!