Tortellini Soup

The first time I made this soup was May of 2009! I sometimes forget to go back to recipes I’ve made that are worth making again. This is one of those recipes.

I printed out a recipe from Spark People for what I thought was tortellini soup, but it turned out to be a recipe for a side dish that was just called “tortellini with vegetables.” Since I still had soup on my brain, I read the recipe a few times, thinking they missed an ingredient. “Where’s the broth?” Then I read the instructions and found out it wasn’t soup!

BUT, I wanted to make it soup, so this is my version:

Ingredients:

1 medium red pepper, sliced
1 medium green pepper, sliced
1 orange pepper, sliced
4 cloves of garlic
1 cup snow peas, sugar snap peas, or green beans (I used pea pods)
2 tsp. olive oil
1 banana pepper, sliced (optional)
1 medium onion, chopped
5 or 6 fresh basil leaves (didn’t have that!)
salt and pepper to taste
2 quarts of chicken broth
2 chicken breasts, boneless, cubed and cooked
1 package frozen cheese tortellini

In a big blender, I chopped up the veggies and added some of the chicken broth and pureed all the veggies.

I do not like chunks of veggies 🙂

In a big stock pot, I added the oil, the pureed veggies, and the rest of the chicken broth. Heat on low, stirring for about 10 minutes. Then in a separate skillet I cooked 2 chicken breasts, which I cut into small pieces until they were almost cooked through and added that to the pot. Then I added the frozen cheese tortellini (1 bag) and put the heat on high until it came to a boil, then reduced the heat and cooked for about 6-8 minutes until the tortellini was cooked. If you are using the fresh basil, after the soup is done, add the basil to the soup and stir it in.

It turned out so great!

It was a little spicy, but the flavors of all the peppers was wonderful. For my bowl, I picked out 1 serving of tortellini (which was 12 tortellini for only 290 calories!) and I took about 1 1/2 cups of broth and picked out the pea pods and a little chicken. So I am thinking its about 340 calories or so for a nice big bowl. If you wanted to have it less calories, then you could reduce the amount of tortellini.

Have a great Friday, any good weekend plans??