Vegetable soup with tortellini
Vegetable soup with tortellini is one of my sister’s favourite soup as it combines a lot of vegetables and the tortellini pasta is a delightful twist to make it even more substantial. You may add tortellini filled with spinach and cheese to keep it vegetarian or with a meat filling if that is what you prefer.
Hearty ingredients
The ingredients to make this vegetable soup with tortellini may easily vary depending on your preference. The fennel, although it may seem like a lot at the start, actually reduces while it sautés and the strong anise-like flavour becomes more subtle. By adding pumpkin, carrots and zucchini the soup has a sweet taste, which is balanced with the light liquorice taste of the fennel.
To make the vegetable soup with tortellini is very easy as you simply chop up all the ingredients, sauté the fennel and onion, add the water and cook in it the rest of the vegetables. To finish it, you just blitz it all up and place the ready-made tortellini to cook in the vegetable soup.
Main cooking tips
The two main cooking tips about this vegetable soup with tortellini involves the cooking time for the pasta and the consistency of the soup. You want to eat the pasta close to el dente and not mushy. Consider that the tortellini will remain in the vegetable soup, you are not straining it as you do with other pasta dishes. Hence the tortellini will keep cooking in the hot liquid. So you should cook it for a minute or so less than the recommended time, before taking the pot off the heat.
The pasta that cooks in the vegetable soup releases starch, which is a natural thickener. So once the pasta is cooked, the soup thickens more so because of the starch that is in it. The soup will then thicken further after it completely cools down and stored in the fridge. If you prefer the soup to have a thinner consistency then you simply add more water before you add the pasta. But I would highly reccomend you try the measurements below first and adjust accordingly the next time.. Because I’m sure you’ll be making this again 😊
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- 1 Fennel bulb, 500g
- 3 tbs olive oil
- 1 brown onion, 130g sliced
- 2.5 L water
- 2 tsp salt
- 2 medium carrots, 250g chopped
- 2 medium zucchinis, 300g chopped
- 2 small white potatoes, 300g chopped
- Half butternut pumpkin, 600g chopped
- ¼ cup lemon juice
- 640 g fresh tortellini pasta, 4 serves package
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To prepare the fennel remove the stalks but keep the fronds and set aside. Then slice the
bulbs to use. The fronts will be used to top up the final soup with. -
Heat the olive oil in a large pot, sauté the sliced onion and fennel on a medium heat. Once
they soften then add the water in the pot. -
Bring the water to a boil and add all the ingredients except from the tortellini. Cook on a
medium heat for 30min and then blitz them with an immersion blender. -
Bring to a boil again, add the tortellini and let them cook for just a bit less than the recommended product time. Then take the pot off the heat and let the soup rest
for 5min or so before serving. This will help the soup thicken even more and
the tortellini will continue cooking.
