Sausage Tortellini Soup

This was another recipe I made while at my mother's house. I didn't realize it until this meal was complete, but this is a one-dish meal that is easy, delicious, and different! My husband loves sausage, and we have access to some great sausage in the area with a variety of flavors. 
The recipe says to use bulk sausage, which I found out for the first time meant ground meat. 
Embarrassing confession: I just started cooking with sausage this year for my husband (I wasn't a huge fan until now), and had to ask him the first time I cooked it whether or not I was supposed to take the casing off. Every time I've cooked sausage so far, I have only needed to cut it and fry it up, so I have not taken the casing off. Whenever I saw 'bulk sausage' in a recipe, I thought it was suggesting you buy it in bulk (high quantity) and use some of that. Apparently not! So if you only have links, you can just take it out of the casing to make it ground. 

I do suggest cooking this meal in the largest saucepan you have (not a stockpot). My mom's large saucepan is not teflon-lined, so I started with some oil. But even this did not prevent the bottom from getting a little brown. If you want to try to avoid this altogether, you could try cooking the sausage in a separate teflon-lined skillet and then transfer it to a pot.

She had some delicious Italian sausage that I used. Some people like to break their sausage up very fine, but I left them in bigger chunks, so that we could get some good bite-sizes of the good stuff. After the sausage is cooked, I added stewed tomatoes (cut up), beef broth, french onion soup and cabbage. This is a good meal if you have some left-over cabbage. The cabbage cooks down, so if it's a bit older, this is a good recipe to use it up. 

The recipe calls for 9 ounces of refrigerated tortellini. However, I had a 19 ounce frozen bag, and planned to use it all because my husband and I are huge tortellini fans, so you can never have too much. The instructions on the bag of the tortellini stated it should cook in 3 1/2 minutes, but I found it had to cook at least 5 minutes longer once the soup started simmering again. 

I tried the soup before I put on the parmesan cheese, and then added some on top. Honestly, I thought it was better without the cheese, and my mom agreed. Although I didn't try it, I think it would be better with some shredded mozzarella cheese mixed in rather than parmesan. It does give you that italian flavor, if that's what you love.

I think this is a recipe that you could experiment with different flavors of sausage and even add some other veggies such as carrots and peppers to add more color. If you have plain stewed tomatoes, I think it would probably work to add some italian seasoning with the tomatoes to cook in that extra flavor as well. 

Sausage Tortellini Soup
1 pound bulk Italian sausage
2 cups water
2 cups chopped cabbage
1 can (14 1/2 oz) Italian stewed tomatoes, undrained and cut up
1 can (14 1/2 oz) beef broth
1 can (10 1/2 oz) condensed French onion soup
1 package (9 oz) refrigerated cheese tortellini
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1. In a large saucepan, cook sausage over medium heat until it is no longer pink; drain. 
2. Stir in the water, cabbage, tomatoes, broth, and soup. Bring to a boil. 
3. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered for 8 minutes. Stir in tortellini; cook 7-9 minutes longer or until pasta is tender. Sprinkle with cheese. 

Yield: 10 servings (2 1/2 quarts)