LASAGNA SOUP
A steaming hot bowl of Lasagna Soup makes everybody happy at dinnertime.
Soup season is in full swing and I couldn’t be more excited. Since we moved to Ohio, I’ve been looking forward to meals full of all my favorite Soups and Stews as the temperatures drop.
I already have a feeling we’ll be eating many more bowls of this tasty soup on cold nights all winter long!
What is Lasagna Soup?
Lasagna soup is everything you love about a classic Italian lasagna simmered in soup form. My family loves lasagna with lots of meat in it, so I used both hot sausage and ground beef in this soup.
After browning the meat, I added onions, garlic, and tomatoes along with Italian Seasoning. After simmering everything in chicken broth and adding curly mafalda noodles, the soup finishes with the best ingredient of all: lots of cheese.
For the cheese topping, I use a blend of three different kinds of Italian cheeses. The mix of Ricotta, Parmesan, and Mozzarella cheese adds rich, creamy flavors to this soup.
A big scoop of the cheese topping on my bowl of soup made me very happy indeed. Every spoonful of soup was full of tangy tomato, hot sausage, perfectly cooked noodles, and gooey cheese.
Everyone in my family loves this Lasagna Soup. Most of us went back for a second bowl!
Easy Lasagna Soup
Perhaps the best thing about this delicious Italian soup is how easy it is. Sometimes you want lasagna without all the steps of boiling noodles, browning the meat and placing everything layer by layer in a casserole dish.
The noodles in this soup cook right in the pot with the other ingredients, so this recipe will save you both cooking and clean up time. Who wants to be stuck in the kitchen doing dishes when you could be digging into a big bowl of delicious soup?
You can make this soup ahead of time, too! Follow all the directions up to adding the noodles and store in an airtight container in the fridge or freezer.
Once ready to serve, bring the soup to a simmer again, add the noodles and cook until tender. Waiting to add the noodles if you prep the soup in advance ensures that they won’t get mushy.
I love the way my Homemade Italian Seasoning tastes in this recipe, but your favorite store-bought Italian herb blend will work beautifully as well. If you like a spicier soup, feel free to increase the amount of red pepper in the recipe.
Likewise, if you want a little less heat, reduce the red pepper flakes by as much as you like. We all loved the taste of hot Italian sausage in this Lasagna Soup recipe but other types of sausage would likely taste good too.
Mafalda Noodles
What are Mafalda noodles? They’re a miniature flat noodle with curvy edges, just like a miniature lasagna noodle.
These small Mafalda noodles are absolutely perfect in Lasagna Soup, and these longer Mafalda noodles caught my eye when I was buying the others and now I can’t wait to try them too.
Using these flat curvy noodles really makes this soup feel like a spin on lasagna. If you can’t find Mafalda noodles, pretty much any curly noodle will work in the Lasagna Soup recipe. Play with it and make it your own.
Lasagna Soup Recipe
- In a large soup pot or Dutch oven, cook and crumble the sausage and ground beef over medium-high heat. Add the onions and the garlic to cook along with the meat. Sprinkle with Italian seasonings and red pepper flakes as everything cooks.
- Add the tomato paste, diced tomatoes, chicken broth, salt, and pepper. Stir and increase heat to high. When soup begins to simmer, reduce to medium-high once again and add the pasta. Stir and simmer until noodles are soft, 8-10 minutes. Taste the broth and adjust spices as needed.
- Remove from the heat when the noodles are tender but still chewy. While the pasta is cooking, stir together the ricotta, Parmesan, and Mozzarella in a small bowl.
- Scoop the soup into bowls and top with a generous scoop of the cheese mixture.
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