Homemade Cheese Tortellini Soup with Chicken and Spinach

The internet is flooded with different pasta dough recipes and my best advice would be to try them all. I don’t say that because they all work or don’t work, but there are just so many factors on whether or not your pasta will turn out. For instance, if the eggs are small or big, if you live in a humid or drier part of the country... catch my drift? Despite these factors, I think I can help you get to where you need to go no matter where you live. Just know that your recipe may need to be tweaked right in the middle of making it.

Truth be told, I had to redo this recipe, while I was off camera of course, because it kept shredding while in the pasta roller which means it was too dry. How’s that for vulnerability from a chef? I want you to know though that if this happens to you it’s ok, it literally happens to the best of us. After my dough resembled Swiss cheese I called in a true professional, my Italian aunt in Detroit. If anyone can help solve pasta issues it’s her; she’s literally been rolling it out her whole life and learned from THE pro, my grandma who was from Italy. She told me what I’m telling you, there are a lot of factors at play. The best advice I could give is to make sure the dough is soft and springs back to shape slowly if you press it down before sending it into the refrigerator to cool.

So now that my chef hiccup is out in the open, let’s get back to making this homemade cheese tortellini soup! Once your pasta is rolled out, you want to put very small dollops of the delicious ricotta and parmesan cheese fillings all over it, while giving it about an inch of space around it. Next, you want to cut them using the ravioli cutter and then fold them over and bring the edges together, and voila, you have homemade cheese tortellini.

You want to let them dry out a bit before cooking them, and you can either pre-cook them in some boiling water and serve them to order with a bowl of delicious soup or you can cook them right in the soup. I’m going to advise that you do the first procedure because that way if you are letting the soup sit all day you risk the chance of the tortellini’s breaking up and cheese and random pasta dough parts swimming through your soup. Par-boil them, chill them, toss in oil, and serve to order, simple as that.

The soup is incredibly easy to make and just like any delicious soup it has to start with a good base. I’ve been making chicken stock a lot more lately just because the flavor is ridiculously more robust than that of what comes in a box from the store. Chicken stock traditionally is made by roasting up chicken carcasses and simmering them over low heat with veggies and herbs. Since we are going to use the chicken as the main protein in this soup, we are going to cook the chicken whole with veggies and herbs. I actually like this because the skin and fat from the chicken adds so much flavor to the stock, in fact I like it better than the old traditional way of using bones but in the restaurant industry who's got that kind of money to boil off whole chickens?

When the stock is done, drain it and pull the chicken meat apart from the chicken body and add it into that strained stock along with veggies and let it simmer until they are tender. Finish off the soup with salt and pepper, herbs, baby spinach, and cooked homemade cheese tortellini to order!

This soup is seriously nothing short of amazing and I promise you will love the final outcome making this 2 to 2 ½ hour recipe all worth it. Happy cooking you guys!