Creamy Sausage Tortellini Soup is a comforting one-pot meal, ideal for winter and fall evenings, bringing warmth and flavor to your table.
Rich and creamy soups are the perfect comfort food for getting through the cold months. For more delicious Soup Recipes, try my Slow Cooker Minestrone Soup and Mushroom Soup.
Sabrina’s Creamy Sausage Tortellini Soup with Spinach Recipe
Sausage and Spinach Tortellini Soup has become a go-to recipe in my house. It turns out irresistibly creamy, and it’s oh-so easy to make. It’s the perfect comfort food for the next time you need to throw something together quickly. You’d be hard-pressed to find an easier recipe. Especially one that turns out this flavorful and family-friendly.
Recipe Card
Ingredients
- 1 pound hot Italian sausage ground
- 6 cups Chicken Broth
- 4 cups spinach
- 10 ounces cheese tortellini
- 1 cup heavy cream
Instructions
- In a large dutch oven over medium high heat, crumble and brown sausage. When done, remove onto paper towel lined plate. Drain excess fat from the pan.
- Return pot to heat. Add chicken stock, scraping up any brown bits on the bottom of the pan.
- Return the sausage to the pan along with the tortellini and add in the spinach, simmer 7 minutes, or until tortellini is cooked.
- Stir in the heavy cream and stir well to combine.
Nutrition
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Note from Sabrina
Looking to enhance the creaminess and richness of your Tortellini Soup? Consider using a creamy tomato sauce! Prepare your soup as usual, then mix in a can of tomato paste after adding the chicken broth. Be sure to blend the tomato paste with the broth and cream.
Table of contents
About this Recipe
Tortellini Soup is a simple and classic Italian recipe. You can make the whole dish with just 5 ingredients, but it’s still incredibly flavorful. The tortellini pasta is cheese-filled, making it an even richer dish than your typical noodle soup. The sausage has delicious Italian spices, and the fresh spinach brings a savory, earthy taste to the soup.
Can this be made ahead of time?
Yes, it’s a great recipe to make some extra and freeze for later. It keeps well, so you’ll have a delicious dinner ready with hardly any work.
Pairing Suggestions
You can serve your Tortellini and Sausage Soup as a side dish or as the main dish. To make this a filling dinner as the main course, try adding sides like crusty bread and a salad. You can always use store-bought bread, but if you want something extra special, try making Pesto Cheesy Bread or Parker House Rolls. Some salads that would go great with the soup are my Easy Greek Salad and Classic Wedge Salad recipes.
How to Store
- Serve: After cooking Sausage Tortellini Soup, don’t leave it at room temperature for more than 2 hours.
- Store: Let the soup cool, then store it in an airtight container to keep in the fridge. It will keep well for up to 3 days.
- Freeze: Properly sealed, you can store it for up to 3 months in the freezer.
Alternative Cooking Techniques
Slow Cooker Method
- Start by crumbling the Italian sausage and browning it in a skillet. Once it’s browned remove the excess fat from the sausage.
- Add the Italian Sausage and chicken broth to the slow cooker.
- Set the crock pot to medium-low heat and let the soup cook for 7-8 hours.
- About 30 minutes before you’re done cooking, add the cheese tortellini, spinach, and cream to the crock pot.
- Stir occasionally, then serve.
Instant Pot Method
- Set your instant pot to sauté mode. Put some extra-virgin olive oil in the bottom of the pot and brown the Italian sausage.
- Add in the broth. Use a spoon to stir and scrape any brown bits off the bottom of the instant pot.
- Seal and pressure cook for 5 minutes.
- After quick releasing set the instant pot to sauté again. Once the soup begins to boil add the tortellini and cook the pasta.
- Still on sauté add the spinach and stir in the half-and-half. Cook until pasta is done and the spinach is wilted.
Variations
- Creamy Chicken Tortellini Soup: Instead of using sausage in this soup you can cook up some chicken breast to put in the soup. However, the Chicken Tortellini Soup won’t have the flavor that comes with Italian Sausage. To make up for this, try adding some Italian seasoning or other spices to your Creamy Chicken Tortellini Soup. You could also try using turkey.
- Cheesy Tortellini Soup: Although there’s already plenty of cheese in the tortellini, you can add even more melty cheese to the soup before serving. Sprinkle some fresh Parmesan cheese on top of the soup. You can also put some Parmesan Cheese out on the table so people can add it as they want.
- Broth: Instead of using chicken broth, you can exchange it for beef broth or vegetable broth.
- More add-ins: There are so many other flavorful ingredients you can try the next time you make this soup. Try adding in some veggies like chopped carrots, green onion, diced tomato, and fire-roasted tomatoes. You can also cook up some minced garlic, and onion along with the sausage. Cook the garlic and onion in the skillet until the onion is translucent and the garlic is fragrant. To make your creamy soup more filling try adding some white beans or gnocchi noodles. To make Creamy Tortellini Soup more flavorful mix in some Italian seasoning, fresh basil, garlic salt, black pepper, or red pepper flakes.
Related Recipes
More Italian Soup Recipes
I make a version of this with gluten free gnocchi. So easy!
This goes against conventional wisdom, but I actually portioned this soup out into pint mason jars and froze it, after cooling in the fridge first so as not to temperature-shock the glass. The milkfat in the cream separated out during freezing and it generally looked terrible, yeah, but after thawing in the fridge overnight, and then reheating in the microwave a minute at a time (stirring after each minute) until it was warmed through, the milkfat melted back in just fine. Even the spinach still had a little bite to it, and the tortellinis didn’t fall apart at all, possibly because they’d been frozen quickly. So I got to enjoy eight jars of delicious, comforting soup over the course of months.
10/10, will definitely make again once it starts getting cold.
This soup is full of all my favorites!! It’s hearty & full of taste! Love one pot meals!
Thanks for the 5 stars, Kristyn.
This is such a creamy and delicious soup!! Everyone loved it so much!!
I’m happy to know you all enjoyed it!
this soup is so good! I love how tasty the seasoning was!
Thanks for coming back to let me know how much you enjoyed it, Allyson.
Another winner! I made this with some minor edits-sauteing some onions and garlic before adding the sausage, using frozen chopped spinach, slightly thickening the soup and adding some grated parmesan at the end of cooking. This soup was absolutely delicious! Another one of your recipes that hubby has requested go into regular rotation!
Yay! Thanks for coming back to let me know it was a hit.
Sabrina – I am doubling the recipe, so I sound each ingredient?
Yes, though it does make a lot so make sure that you have a dutch oven large enough to fit it. It might be easier making it in separate batches.
Hi Sabrina – if I add the green onions, when would I introduce them?
I’d add it in with the spinach.
This recipe fell into my lap, as I had frozen sausage I needed to use up. I personally used regular sausage and it still turned out to be one of the easiest, most flavorful dinners I’ve made in a long time. Thank you!!
Yay! It was serendipitous! Thanks for the 5 stars.
Yum! I love a rich and creamy soup. I’ve had a tomato-based tortellini soup before but I’ve been wanting to try a creamy version. This one looks so good!
Enjoy!
What kind of cheese do I buy for this recipe? I don’t know what tortellini cheese is…
You’ll be using tortellini (pasta) that has cheese in it for this recipe. It’s all in one. You can find it in the refrigerated section of your grocery store with other packaged pasta. Hope this helps!
I made this in the instant pot following the recipe exactly (except i didn’t use hot sausage) and it never got thick and creamy.
You can always add a roux at the end to help thicken the soup too.
What do you think you could substitute for the spinach?
You can use chard or kale but both may need a slightly longer cooking time than the spinach. Enjoy!