Creamy Vegetable Tortellini Soup

Creamy Vegetable Tortellini Soup is cheese tortellini and vegetables in a broth that turns silky right at the end. Every spoonful gets a pillow of pasta and a tangle of spinach, with Parmesan melting into the top. The broth is rich enough that you’ll want bread for the bottom of the bowl.

I’m not taking questions on this.

Think about what tortellini actually is. Someone else made the pasta. Someone else made the filling. Someone else folded every single one of those tiny parcels and put them in a bag for you. Your entire job is to boil water.

I keep a bag in the freezer at all times, which I’d call meal planning if I were being generous with myself.

Here’s what it does to a soup. You build a normal pot of vegetables and broth, which is fine, but is, let’s be honest, a pot of vegetables. Then 5 minutes before the end you throw in a pound of cheese tortellini and it turns into dinner. Pasta and cheese in every spoonful, no browning, no sauce to build, nothing else to wash.

This one has carrots, celery, green beans and spinach in it, and right at the end a splash of heavy cream and a handful of Parmesan go in and turn the broth silky. It’s vegetarian, it’s done in 40 minutes, and it all happens in one pot.

• Cheese tortellini (1 pound): Fresh or frozen both work. Frozen needs about 1 extra minute. Don’t use dried, it takes far longer and the texture never quite recovers.
• Olive oil (2 tablespoons): For the vegetables at the start.
• Onion (1 large, chopped), carrots (4 medium, peeled and chopped) and celery (2 stalks, chopped): The base. 4 carrots sounds like a lot and it isn’t, they’re most of the sweetness in this soup.
• Garlic (3 cloves, minced): 30 seconds at the end of the sauté, no longer.
• Green beans (2 cups, trimmed and halved): Fresh or frozen. They keep a bit of bite, which this soup needs or it all goes soft.
• Italian seasoning (1 tablespoon): My own Italian Seasoning blend.
• Sweet paprika (1 teaspoon): For color and a faint warmth. Not smoked, which would take over.
• Salt (1 teaspoon, plus more to taste): Start here and taste at the end, after the Parmesan has gone in.
• Tomato paste (2 tablespoons): Not enough to make it a tomato soup. Just enough to give the broth a backbone.
• Vegetable broth (8 cups, low sodium): Chicken broth works if you’re not keeping it vegetarian.
• Parmesan (½ cup, grated): Goes in with the tortellini and melts into the broth.
• Heavy cream (½ cup): At the very end, off the boil. This is what turns it from a vegetable soup into this soup.
• Fresh spinach (2 cups, roughly chopped): In at the last minute. It wilts in about 60 seconds and any longer turns it grey.

Sauté the vegetables: Heat the 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large Dutch oven over medium high heat. Add the chopped onion, 4 chopped carrots and 2 chopped celery stalks and cook about 3 minutes.

Add the aromatics: Stir in the 3 minced garlic cloves and cook 30 seconds. Add the 2 cups green beans, 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning, 1 teaspoon sweet paprika, 1 teaspoon salt, pepper and the 2 tablespoons tomato paste, and stir to coat everything.

Simmer: Pour in the 8 cups vegetable broth, bring to a boil, then cover and simmer about 10 minutes, until the carrots are tender.

Cook the tortellini: Add the 1 pound cheese tortellini and the ½ cup grated Parmesan. Cook about 5 minutes, until the tortellini float and are cooked through. Add 1 extra minute if yours came from the freezer.

Finish: Stir in the ½ cup heavy cream and the 2 cups chopped spinach and cook 1 minute, just until the spinach wilts. Take it off the heat and taste for salt.

Serve: More Parmesan over every bowl.

Cheese tortellini is what I use and what I’d recommend, because the filling stays mild and lets the broth do the talking.

• Fresh (the refrigerated kind) is the best texture and cooks in about 5 minutes.
• Frozen works just as well and needs about 1 extra minute. Don’t thaw it first, straight from the bag into the pot.
• Dried is the one to skip. It takes 12 to 15 minutes, which is long enough for your carrots to give up, and the pasta stays slightly chalky no matter what you do.

Spinach and ricotta tortellini is lovely here if you see it. Meat filled tortellini works too, though at that point you may as well go and make my Sausage Tortellini Soup, which has sausage in it and is a different sort of evening entirely.

This works in a crockpot, with 1 rule about timing that isn’t negotiable.

Sauté the onion, carrots and celery with the garlic and tomato paste in a pan first, then transfer everything except the tortellini, cream and spinach to the slow cooker with the broth. Low 5 to 6 hours or high 2 to 3.

Add the tortellini in the last 20 minutes, on high. Then stir in the cream, Parmesan and spinach in the final 5 minutes and turn it off. Tortellini that sits in a slow cooker splits open and surrenders its filling into the broth, and cream that cooks for hours separates. Both are avoidable and neither is fixable.

• Make it vegan: Swap the heavy cream for full fat coconut milk or a cashew cream, use a vegan Parmesan, and find vegan tortellini. That’s 3 substitutions, which is a lot, but it does work.
• Add protein: Shredded rotisserie chicken in the last 5 minutes, or a can of drained white beans with the broth.
• More greens: Kale instead of spinach, added 5 minutes earlier since it’s tougher. Or both.
• Different vegetables: Zucchini, peas, corn and broccoli all work. Add the quick cooking ones with the tortellini rather than at the start.
• Make it richer: Half and half instead of heavy cream is lighter. Full fat is better. You know which camp you’re in.

I love serving this Creamy Vegetable Tortellini Soup with something light and crispy to balance its creamy, hearty flavors. Here are some ideas:

20 minutes mins

Easy Garlic Bread

2 hours hrs 45 minutes mins

Artisan Bread

15 minutes mins

Antipasto Platter

20 minutes mins

Easy Bruschetta Recipe

Fridge: 3 days in an airtight container.

Now the honest bit: tortellini keeps drinking broth. By tomorrow this is noticeably thicker and the pasta is softer than it was tonight. I don’t mind it. If you do, add a splash of broth when you reheat.

Making it ahead on purpose? Cook the soup without the tortellini, then add fresh tortellini to each batch as you reheat it. 5 minutes and it’s like new.

Freezer: I’d freeze the base only, without the tortellini, cream or spinach, for up to 3 months. Cream splits when frozen and tortellini turns to mush. Thaw, reheat, then add all 3 at the end.

Reheating: Gently, over medium low. Boiling it hard will split the cream.

To go with it:

• Quick Yeast Dinner Rolls
• Cheddar Cheese Buttermilk Biscuits

More soup:

• Sausage Tortellini Soup
• Minestrone Soup
• Tuscan Bean Soup
• Summer Chicken Vegetable Soup
• Instant Pot Chicken Noodle Soup

More tortellini:

• Creamy Sausage Tortellini
• Creamy Tortellini