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Lasagna Soup

Everything good about lasagna in one pot: Italian sausage and tomato broth, broken noodles cooked right in the soup, and a spoonful of seasoned ricotta and melting mozzarella on every bowl.

Prep
15 min
Cook
40 min
Makes
Serves 6
Jump to the recipe
A bowl of tomato soup with pasta and vegetables
Photo: Catkin / Pixabay

Lasagna soup takes the parts of lasagna that taste best, the meat sauce and the cheese, and drops the part that takes all afternoon: layering and baking. What is left is a tomato and sausage broth thick with ruffled noodles, and a cool, seasoned ricotta mixture spooned onto each bowl so it melts into the hot soup as you eat.

The flavor comes almost entirely from the first ten minutes. Italian sausage browned hard in the pot, broken into small pieces, leaves a layer of fat and browned bits on the bottom. Onion and garlic soften in that fat, then a few spoons of tomato paste cook in it until they turn from bright red to brick. That step caramelizes the paste and takes away its raw, tinny edge. Rush it and the soup tastes of canned tomatoes; give it two minutes and it tastes of a sauce that simmered for hours.

Use a mix of sweet and hot sausage if you like some heat, or all sweet with a pinch of red pepper flakes. Ground beef works, but sausage brings its own fennel and garlic seasoning, which saves a lot of measuring and is why the broth tastes so much like lasagna.

The noodles are where most versions go wrong. Lasagna noodles are thick, and they cook in the soup in about twelve minutes. Cooked in the broth, they release starch that thickens it, which is good. But they keep absorbing liquid after the heat is off, so a pot that looked perfect at dinner is a pot of soft noodles with no broth by the next day. If you expect leftovers, cook the noodles separately and add them to each bowl.

Break the noodles into pieces about two inches across before they go in, and stir often for the first few minutes so they do not stick to each other or to the bottom of the pot. Mafalda, the small ruffled pasta that looks like miniature lasagna, is a good shortcut if you can find it.

The ricotta topping is not optional; it is what makes this lasagna and not just a sausage minestrone. Ricotta mixed with Parmesan, a little mozzarella, garlic, salt and basil sits in a cool dollop on top of each bowl. As you stir it in, it melts and turns the broth creamy around the spoon.

Finish with fresh basil and extra Parmesan, and set out crusty bread for the bottom of the bowl. For another Italian-American bowl, crock pot gnocchi soup cooks itself while you work. Creamy sausage pasta takes the same browned sausage in a different direction, and baked ziti is the oven version for a crowd.

A pot of tomato soup beside dried pasta and fresh tomatoes
Photo: eatde / Pixabay

Lasagna soup in one pot

Everything good about lasagna in one pot: Italian sausage and tomato broth, broken noodles cooked right in the soup, and a spoonful of seasoned ricotta and melting mozzarella on every bowl.

The pot and the ricotta topping

For the soup

  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 lb (450 g) Italian sausage, sweet, hot or a mix, casings removed
  • 1 medium yellow onion, diced
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 3 tbsp tomato paste
  • 1 tsp dried oregano
  • 1 tsp dried basil
  • ¼ tsp red pepper flakes
  • 1 can (28 oz / 794 g) crushed tomatoes
  • 1 can (14.5 oz / 411 g) diced tomatoes
  • 6 cups (1.4 L) chicken broth
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 8 oz (225 g) lasagna noodles, broken into 2 in (5 cm) pieces
  • 1 tsp fine salt, plus more to taste
  • ½ tsp black pepper
  • 2 handfuls (60 g) baby spinach (optional)

For the cheese topping

  • 1 cup (250 g) whole-milk ricotta
  • ½ cup (50 g) Parmesan, finely grated, plus more to serve
  • 1 cup (115 g) low-moisture mozzarella, shredded
  • 1 small clove garlic, finely grated
  • ¼ tsp fine salt
  • 2 tbsp chopped fresh basil, plus leaves to serve

Brown, toast the paste, simmer the noodles

  1. 1 Heat the oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the sausage and cook, breaking it into small pieces with a spoon, until well browned, 7–8 minutes.
  2. 2 Lower the heat to medium. Add the onion and cook until soft, 4–5 minutes, then the garlic for 30 seconds.
  3. 3 Stir in the tomato paste, oregano, basil and red pepper flakes. Cook, stirring, until the paste darkens to a brick red and starts to stick to the pot, about 2 minutes.
  4. 4 Add the crushed and diced tomatoes, broth and bay leaf, scraping up the browned bits from the bottom. Bring to a boil, then simmer 10 minutes.
  5. 5 Add the broken noodles and simmer, stirring often for the first 3 minutes so they do not clump, until tender, 10–12 minutes. Stir in the spinach, if using, until wilted. Remove the bay leaf and season with salt and pepper.
  6. 6 While the noodles cook, stir together the ricotta, Parmesan, half the mozzarella, the grated garlic, salt and chopped basil.
  7. 7 Ladle the soup into bowls. Top each with a heaping spoonful of the ricotta mixture, a sprinkle of the remaining mozzarella, more Parmesan and a few basil leaves.

Leftover noodles, the slow cooker and freezing

  • Leftovers: the noodles keep absorbing broth. If you plan to have leftovers, cook the noodles separately in salted water, drain, and add them to each bowl. Store soup and noodles apart for up to 4 days.
  • Reheating: add a splash of broth or water to loosen the soup, which thickens a lot in the refrigerator.
  • Slow cooker: brown the sausage and build the base through step 3, transfer everything except the noodles and spinach to a slow cooker, and cook on low 6 hours. Add the noodles for the last 30 minutes on high.
  • Freezing: freeze the soup without noodles or topping for up to 3 months.
  • Lighter: use Italian turkey sausage and part-skim ricotta.

Thirsty noodles, other meats and other pastas

The noodles kept soaking it up after cooking. Cook them separately for leftovers, or add 1–2 cups (240–475 ml) of broth when reheating.

Yes. Add 1 tsp fennel seed, ½ tsp garlic powder and an extra ½ tsp salt with the tomato paste to make up for the sausage seasoning.

Mafalda or campanelle are closest. Any short pasta works; adjust the cooking time to the package.

Yes, but it is the part that makes it taste like lasagna. Shredded mozzarella and Parmesan on top are a simpler alternative.