Lasagna Soup

When Matt travels I often find myself picking up containers of soup from the deli at the local gourmet grocery store, Kowalski's, for lunch or dinner. Recently, they seem to have a whole bunch of new varieties for winter & I was intrigued by one called lasagna soup. It was so good I knew I had to try creating a version of it at home.

A creamy tomato soup is made even creamier with ricotta cheese & seasoned with basil & oregano. Sausage & lasagna noodles are added creating a hearty soup with all the flavors of lasagna. We used a spicy Italian sausage which gave a good bite of heat against the creamy, cheesy soup. The broken lasagna noodles make great soup noodles,retaining their texture even two days later, plus, I like a thick noodle in soups. This soup was tasty as is but next time I may add some spinach for color & to get some greens in our winter diet.

We had our first snowstorm of the winter this past weekend which kept us trapped inside on Saturday. This soup was the perfect warmer in front of the fire re-watching all the Harry Potter movies (yes, I'm getting excited to see the new one Thursday night!).

Lasagna Soup

1 lb bulk Italian sausage, we used hot but mild would be find too
5 oz yellow onion, chopped
2 large garlic cloves, chopped, about 2 T
1 T tomato paste
1 t dried basil
1/2 t dried oregano
2 t kosher salt
few grinds fresh pepper
2 14.5 oz cans of crushed or diced tomatoes
2 T sherry
2 c chicken stock
1 c half & half
1 c ricotta
1/4 c grated parmesan
6 lasagna noodles (not the no boil kind)

In a large heavy soup pan or dutch oven brown the sausage over medium-high heat until cooked through, break it into pieces as you go. Remove from the pan & set aside.

The pan should have a good coating of fat in it from the sausage if not, add a little olive oil. Cook the onions & garlic over medium-high heat until tender & the onions are translucent. Add the tomato paste, basil, oregano, salt & pepper. Cook while stirring for about a minutes. Add the tomatoes & bring to a simmer. Let simmer 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water to a boil. Salt the water. Break the lasagna noodles into large pieces & put into the boiling water. Boil until just undercooked, for us that was about 6 1/2 minutes. Drain & set aside.

Process the soup until smooth either in a blender or with an immersion blender. Stir in the sherry, chicken stock & half & half. Heat through over low heat. Add the ricotta & parmesan. Stir over low heat until melted. Stir in the sausage & noodles. Taste for seasoning & adjust as needed.

Serve with extra grated parmesan if desired.

Makes 8 servings.

If you are not reading this post in a feed reader or at http://agoodappetite.blogspot.com OR at http://agoodappetite.com then the site you are reading is illegally publishing copyrighted material. Contact me at katbaro AT yahoo DOT COM. All recipes, text and photographs in this post are the original creations & property of the author unless otherwise noted. © 2007-2010 Kathy Lewinski