Raquelle's Kitchen-Sink Soup

I forgot to buy stew meat. And from the repercussions of that error, a new soup recipe as born. I bring you: Raquelle's Kitchen-Sink Soup. I was planning on making Betty Crocker's Slow Cooker Beef-Tortellini Stew for my I Haz Crockpot series but without the meat it was sort of a FAIL. I still had loads of produce and the tortellini so I decided to be scrappy and create my own soup.

A few things about this recipe. It's in fact two recipes. I wanted to make the soup for two special men in my life. First there is Carlos, my beau. Then there is Kevin, one of my best and closest friends. Carlos is a meat-eater and Kevin is a vegetarian, so I decided to simultaneously make two soups that suited each men. In both, I crammed as many vegetables as I possibly could because my boys need to stay healthy.

Ingredients

Vegetarian Version
serves 1
1/3 of the Vegetable mixture*
2 cloves of garlic
2 cans of vegetable broth
1/3 large packet of tortellini
Dried oregano, salt & pepper to taste
1/3 of a can of white navy beans

Meat Version
serves 2-3

2 linguica sausagues sliced
2/3 of the Vegetable mixture*
3 cloves of garlic
4 cups of chicken broth
2/3 large packet of tortellini
Dried oregano, salt & pepper to taste
2/3s of a can of white navy beans.

*Vegetable Mixture
4 carrots peeled and sliced
4 celery hearts chopped, leaves and all
1/2 red-bell pepper chopped
1/2 cubanelle pepper chopped
1/2 onion chopped
handfuls of green and wax beans, trimmed & halved

Since I was doing two soups simultaneously, I chopped all the vegetables, put them into a big bowl and mixed them by hand. This way I could separate 1/3 and 2/3s of the mixture to make sure I had an equal amount of each vegetable in either soup.

In a skillet I cooked the linguica over medium-high heat, with a little drizzle of olive oil. Just to heat through the sausage and to give it some nice color. Set aside.

I sauteed the vegetables in some olive oil in two respective pots. Cook until the vegetable's structure begins to give and they start getting soft.

Add salt, pepper, oregano, beans, garlic and the broths. I was careful to keep the meat and vegetarian versions separate. Bring pots to a boil.

Add your tortellini and cook until the pasta is done. I used fresh tortellini so this only took 5-6 minutes. Once the pasta is done, the soup is done!

Because I was bringing Kevin his soup separately, I didn't cook the tortellini in the vegetable soup. Instead, I put it in it's own container. The problem with pasta in soup is that the pasta keeps absorbing the liquid even after the cooking process is over. So I decided to give him the pasta separately so he can add it to the soup.

I put the vegetarian soup in it's own container. Kevin can add this to a pot, add some additional water and seasoning and heat it up with the tortellini.

For the meat version, I served up the soup by placing some slices of cooked linguica to the bottom of the bowl.

Then I ladled all the good soup on top. It was absolutely delicious and a perfect treat for a November day (albeit a rather warm November day). Enjoy!