creamy tortellini tomato soup with sausage and rapini
Tortellini is typically a disappointment in restaurants: they never give you as much as if you just ordered a regular pasta, and as a result I don’t eat much tortellini. Nobody wants to be the one with the tiny plate.
However, tortellini is criminally underrated in soups, where it sops up the liquid and turns into cheesy little broth pillows. It elevates a normal basic soup like this—a basic template of crumbled-up browned sausage, an excess of garlic, caramelized tomato paste, Better than Bouillon broth, and fistfuls of fancy chopped greens thrown in until the pot is full—to the exact midpoint between pasta dish and soup bowl, the kind where you need a spoon but kind of feel like you could use a fork too.
Rapini, which has a (deserved) reputation for being kind of (incredibly) bitter, softens up really beautifully in this soup. It has a satisfying textural mix of leafy greens plus mini broccoli heads, and braised like this in acidic broth for an hour, it transforms entirely into a tender-but-sturdy soup green. It also happens to go great with sausage. Let rapini in, y’all. You might find you like him.
RECIPE
This easy, hearty tortellini soup comes together in just a few minutes before an hourlong, hands-off simmer. The result is a rich, textural tomato broth loaded with sausage, tortellini, and rapini, a bitter Italian green also known as broccoli rabe.
Effortful time: 15 minutes
Total time: 1 hour
Servings: 6 (see note on freezing!)
YOU NEED
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 lb. mild Italian pork or chicken sausage; bulk is fine (you remove the casings anyway)
4 cloves garlic, smashed and minced
6 oz can tomato paste
1 bunch rapini, washed and stalk-ends trimmed
1 tsp. dried basil
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
2 tsp. dried parsley
10 cups chicken broth; I used Better than Bouillon
18 oz. small ricotta tortellini; I used Nuovo brand
1/4 cup cream
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
Parm for serving
Calabrian chiles in oil, optional, for serving (can also use red chili flakes)
MAKE IT
Brown your sausage. Heat oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Slice open the sausage casings (unless using bulk) and dump the contents into the pot. Brown, breaking up into small pieces with a spoon, for 5-6 minutes or until well-crumbled and no longer pink.
Cook the aromatics. Scoot all the sausage over so oil pools onto the other side of the Dutch oven. Add the garlic and fry until fragrant, then stir quickly to combine with the sausage. Spoon in the tomato paste and stir to combine with the sausage. The tomato paste should turn orange and start to smell caramelized after about a minute or two. Lower the heat to low.
Build the soup. Deglaze with a small amount of the broth and scrape up the pan bits. Add all of the chicken broth—it will look like a lot, but the tortellini soaks up a ton, so this is your insurance policy. The broth itself will be kind of a dirty red orange. Don’t worry about this. Bring this to a simmer.
Prep your rapini. Meanwhile, rinse and trim the ends off your rapini. Chop into bite sized pieces. Throw it all into the pot along with the basil, oregano, and parsley. Salt and pepper it to taste.
Cook the soup. Simmer this at a gentle bubble for 40 minutes, or until the rapini is very soft and the broth has reduced by about an inch (some stoves go faster; it’s not a big deal—you’re just looking for the flavors to concentrate).
Finish the soup. After 40 minutes, add the 1/4 cup of cream and stir well to incorporate. Simmer for 1 minute until the broth turns a burnished red-orange. Toss in the tortellini and cook according to the package directions, usually 2-3 minutes longer.
Serve it up. Ladle into bowls and top with shavings of parm, extra cracked pepper, and chiles.
Note:
This soup freezes very well for later. Stop at step 7, save whatever you’d like to freeze in separate containers, and do steps 8-9 when you’re ready to eat so that the cream doesn’t break / the tortellini doesn’t turn into sog balls.