This tortellini soup recipe comes to us compliments of my neighbor from Kentucky, who shared it with me years ago. Even though we haven’t lived next door to each other for years now, it was time to pull this one out of the recipe file, for two reasons.
First, my youngest child scraped her back when she fell off a low bench yesterday. Of course, I turned to my standard remedy for minor scrapes and boo-boos: a package of frozen veggies applied to the hurt area. My daughter chose a package of spinach. Trouble is, she laid it down when her back didn’t hurt anymore and only remembered it at bedtime.
So much for frozen spinach! That meant I needed to do something with the spinach or throw it out, and you know how much I hate to waste food!
The second reason I turned to this super-simple tortellini soup is that I prepared a GINORMOUS pot of spaghetti yesterday. (I have never figured out how to make a small pot of spaghetti. I blame it on all those evenings as a kid when my brother was carbo-loading before cross-country races. The guy could eat a whole pot by himself!) Even though this recipe calls for tortellini, you can add just about any cooked pasta, making it the perfect go-to recipe for leftovers.
Did I mention how simple this tortellini soup recipe is to prepare? Just throw everything in a pot, warm it up, and you’re good to go!
Ingredients:
1 package of frozen cheese tortellini
2 cans diced tomatoes with oregano
½ Tbs. minced garlic
4 cans chicken broth
½ bag (or more) of frozen spinach
Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions:
Literally, dump it all in a large stock pot, warm it up, and serve! 🙂
For this pot of soup, I cut up some cooked spaghetti and threw it in the pot with the tortellini. I started canning my own tomatoes last year, so I used a quart of canned tomatoes instead of the diced tomatoes mentioned in the recipe. Since I didn’t can the tomatoes with oregano, I added about 1 Tbs. of dried oregano, again, from the summer garden.
I also didn’t have any cans of chicken broth on hand. (By now I’m sure you’re wondering why I made this recipe in the first place, since I did so much improvising!) 🙂 I simply took some of the broth I froze after the last time I roasted a chicken. I added a little water to bring it up to 2 quarts and threw in a couple of bullion cubes for extra flavor.
All this to save one package of no-longer frozen spinach!!! Yeesh!