🇺🇸 United States · home cooking
Lasagna soup
An American home soup of broken lasagna noodles (or other pasta) simmered in a tomato and meat broth, usually with Italian sausage or ground beef, topped with ricotta and mozzarella or Parmesan.
Origin and history
Lasagna soup is an American home-cooking dish named for the classic it imitates in a bowl: America's Test Kitchen describes it as the flavours of lasagna in a one-pot soup, with the noodles cooked in the broth. Taste of Home credits its version to a reader, Sheryl Olenick of Demarest, New Jersey. No source states an inventor or a date.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 6 servings
- Total time
- 50 min
- Hands-on
- 30 min
Ingredients
- 30 ml2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
- 450 g1 lb Italian sausage, hot or sweet, casings removed
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 60 g1/4 cup tomato paste
- 6 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 tsp dried oregano
- 1.4 liters6 cups chicken broth
- 800 g28 oz can crushed tomatoes
- 3 g1/2 tsp table salt
- 10 lasagna noodles, curly-edged, broken into 5 cm (2 in) pieces
- 60 ml1/4 cup heavy cream
- 250 g1 cup whole-milk ricotta, for topping
- fresh basil and grated Parmesan, to garnish
Method
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1. Heat the olive oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat. Brown the sausage, breaking it into crumbles, for 4 to 5 minutes until no pink remains, then move it to a bowl.
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2. In the same pot, cook the onion for 3 to 4 minutes until translucent. Add the tomato paste, garlic and oregano and cook for about 2 minutes, until the paste darkens.
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3. Pour in the broth and the crushed tomatoes, add the salt and the sausage, and bring to a boil.
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4. Add the broken noodles, lower to a gentle simmer and cook uncovered, stirring now and then, for about 20 minutes, until the noodles are tender and the broth has thickened a little from their starch.
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5. Take the pot off the heat and stir in the cream.
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6. Ladle into bowls and top each with a spoonful of ricotta, torn basil and a little Parmesan.
Notes
- An American home soup: the flavours of lasagna (tomato, sausage, noodles, ricotta) without layering; none of the sources read is Italian, and none claims it as an Italian dish. Quantities follow America's Test Kitchen's recipe (serves 6, 50 minutes), which uses hot sausage and 1 to 2 tbsp of crushed Calabrian chiles; sweet sausage and fewer chiles make it milder. The Parmesan garnish is optional and not in that recipe.
- Ground beef is the other common meat: Taste of Home's reader recipe (8 servings) browns 1 lb lean ground beef with a green pepper and an onion, simmers it in diced tomatoes, beef broth, tomato sauce, tomato paste and a cup of frozen corn with Italian seasoning and 2 1/2 cups of spiral pasta, and tops with Parmesan.
- Cook the noodles separately and add them to each bowl if you want leftovers: the pasta keeps absorbing broth. Taste of Home says leftovers keep up to 4 days in the refrigerator, and the soup freezes without the pasta for up to 3 months.
- Mushrooms or spinach are easy additions.
Adapted from America's Test Kitchen, Lasagna Soup and Taste of Home, Lasagna Soup.
At the festivals
Served at 1 festival in United States.
Earlier editions
- January 25, 2025