Why It Works
- A combination of Italian sausage, fresh fennel, and fennel seeds gives the soup a subtle sweetness and fragrant aroma.
- Cooking the tortellini separately from the soup prevents the pasta from overcooking and dissolving in the soup.
- Topping the soup with pesto and Parmigiano-Reggiano gives each bite a herbaceous, nutty flavor and welcome richness.
There are two members of our team who are constantly lurking on Reddit: our editorial director Daniel and me. When I’m not giggling at the silliness of forums dedicated to eggs in strange places or slices of bread stapled to trees, I’m perusing the cooking subreddits, where I get inspiration for recipes and, from time to time, anonymously answer culinary questions. Recently, my feed’s been filled with posts dedicated to what Redditors are calling “the soup,” “updoot soup,” or “upvote soup,” a creamy slow-cooker soup with chicken, spinach, and tortellini.
Apparently the soup has been making the rounds on Reddit since at least 2017, and while some users love the meal enough to include it in their regular rotation, others describe it as an “aggressively mid” recipe that requires many tweaks in order to taste good. (There’s even a thread in which people share their favorite variations on the original recipe.) Curious to see what the hype was all about, I decided to give the original recipe, or what is supposedly the original recipe, a try.
Serious Eat / Amanda Suarez
The recipe instructs cooks to microwave onions, flour, basil, garlic, and tomato paste with a drizzle of olive oil before tossing it into a slow cooker with chicken broth, diced tomatoes, and boneless, skinless chicken thighs. The soup cooks for a whopping four to six hours on low heat before you finish it with tortellini, spinach, Parmesan, and heavy cream. While it was incredibly easy to make, it just wasn’t flavorful enough for my liking. But I felt it had a lot of potential. So, like my fellow Redditors, I decided to put my own spin on the soup. Here’s what I did to take this soup from, yes, “aggressively mid,” to actually delicious.
How to Make Truly Good Creamy Tortellini Soup
Ditch the microwave and slow cooker. I understand the appeal of a set-it-and-forget-it meal, but this is a quick, easy dinner that really doesn’t require (or benefit from) either appliance, and you’re much better off taking the time to brown your aromatics.
Swap out the chicken for sausage. Instead of chucking in several boneless, skinless chicken thighs, I started the soup by sautéeing juicy Italian sausage, which has a sweet, floral note from fennel seeds, in a large pot. Then I further built flavor by using the leftover fat from the sausage to cook my aromatic soffritto (more on that below) right in the same pan.
Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez
Sauté a soffritto. Italian soffritto has the same building blocks as mirepoix—a mixture of onion, carrots, and celery frequently used as a flavorful base for dishes in French cuisine—though it may also contain fennel, parsley, and/or garlic. For a soup with layers of flavor, my soffritto includes a combination of onion, garlic, celery, carrot, and fennel, plus fennel seeds and a pinch of crushed red pepper flakes. As mentioned above, I cooked this mixture in the sausage fat, scraping up the fond to form the most flavorful base possible for the soup.
For a nice dose of umami, use tomato paste instead of diced tomatoes. Though fresh and canned tomatoes contain plenty of glutamic acid (a chemical that gives food an umami note), reaching for them in their concentrated form—tomato paste—is an easy, minimal-effort way to give the soup an intense savory flavor with hints of tangy sweetness.
Thicken with flour. To help thicken the soup and give it extra body, I coat the vegetables with flour, then cook the mixture for several minutes. Not only does this help remove the flour’s raw flavor, but it also prevents unpleasant and unsightly lumps from forming in the soup.
Skip the spinach and use a hardy green. Spinach is delicious, but it doesn’t have quite enough heft to stand up in this creamy, robust soup. So instead of spinach, I recommend using a hardy green like curly or lacinato kale, Swiss chard, or collard greens, which won’t get lost among the tortellini and pieces of sausage.
Serious Eat / Amanda Suarez
Cook the pasta on its own. As tempting as it is to make this a truly one pot meal by cooking the pasta in the soup, it’s worth taking the time to cook the tortellini separately. This allows you to control the doneness of the pasta and prevents the tortellini from overcooking and dissolving into the soup, creating an unappetizing mushy mess.
Serve it with dollops of pesto and plenty of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Instead of incorporating basil into the soup, which many versions call for, I top the soup with pesto for a touch of sweet, herbaceous flavor. A generous shower of nutty Parmigiano-Reggiano brings it all together, and makes each bite wonderfully savory.
Serious Eat / Amanda Suarez
We Took a Reddit-Famous Tortellini Soup and Made It Even Better
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1 tablespoon (15ml) extra-virgin olive oil
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1 1/2 pounds mild or spicy Italian sausage, removed from casing
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1 medium onion (8 ounces; 227g), finely chopped
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3 medium cloves garlic (1/2 ounce; 15g), finely chopped
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3 medium celery ribs (about 5 3/4 ounces; 165g) with leaves, finely chopped
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1 large carrot (about 2 3/4 ounces; 75g), finely chopped
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1 medium fennel bulb (8 ounces; 226g), finely chopped
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1 1/2 teaspoons fennel seeds
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1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
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1/4 cup tomato paste (3 1/2 ounces; 100g)
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1/4 cup all-purpose flour (about 1 ounce; 32g)
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6 cups (1.4L) homemade chicken or vegetable stock or store-bought low-sodium broth
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4 ounces lacinato or curly kale or other hardy greens, such as collards or Swiss chard (about 113g; 2 cups)
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1 cup (240ml) heavy cream
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6 ounces (170g) fresh or frozen cheese tortellini
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Pesto, homemade or store-bought, for serving (optional)
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Grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, for serving (optional)
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In a 5-quart soup pot or Dutch oven, heat olive oil over medium heat until shimmering. Add sausage and cook, stirring to break up the meat and scraping bottom of pot, until well browned, 6 to 8 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove sausage from pot; set aside. If meat has rendered an excessive amount of fat, use a metal or other heat-safe spoon to ladle most of it out, leaving 2 to 3 tablespoons in the pot. (If, conversely, you have less than about 2 tablespoons of fat left, add extra olive oil.) Add onion, garlic, celery, carrot, fennel, fennel seeds, and crushed red pepper flakes (if using), and cook, stirring and scraping bottom of pot, until vegetables are softened and release some moisture, about 8 minutes.
Serious Eat / Amanda Suarez
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Add tomato paste, stirring to coat vegetables evenly, and cook until paste is a dark red, about 3 minutes. Sprinkle flour over vegetables and cook, stirring frequently, until evenly coated and flour begins to stick to bottom, about 2 minutes.
Serious Eat / Amanda Suarez
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Slowly pour in stock or broth, stirring until flour is fully incorporated. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Add kale and return sausage to soup; reduce heat to a simmer until kale is tender and flavors meld, 8 to 10 minutes.
Serious Eat / Amanda Suarez
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Meanwhile: Bring a medium saucepan of salted water to a boil. Add tortellini and cook, stirring, until just shy of al dente, about 2 minutes less than package instructions. Using a colander, drain tortellini; set aside.
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Remove soup from heat. Add heavy cream gradually, stirring to combine, followed by the tortellini. Season to taste with salt and pepper as needed.
Serious Eat / Amanda Suarez
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Divide into bowls and top with pesto and Parmigiano-Reggiano, if using. Serve immediately to prevent tortellini from overcooking.
Serious Eat / Amanda Suarez
Special Equipment
5-quart soup pot or Dutch oven, medium saucepan, colander
Make-Ahead and Storage
The soup can be made through step 3 and refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 5 days or frozen for up to 1 month. Thaw overnight in the fridge if frozen, then reheat over medium-high heat until simmering before proceeding with step 4.
Leftovers can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 4 days (use a slotted spoon to remove cooked tortellini and store in a separate airtight container to prevent it from absorbing too much liquid). Gently reheat soup in a pot over medium-low heat until warmed through and return tortellini to soup. Simmer until tortellini is warm, about 3 minutes.