Easy Chicken Tortellini Soup

Work news: Beaumont Electrical just landed our biggest contract yet. A new apartment complex in Prairieville — sixty units. SIXTY. The kind of job that will take six months and require every hand I've got plus a few more. I'm going to need to hire. Again. The business is growing faster than my comfort zone, and my comfort zone is approximately the size of a crawfish pot, which is to say: small enough to hold in both hands, big enough to feed a family.

Danielle sat me down on Sunday night and said, "You need to start thinking about this as a company, not a crew." She's right. She's always right. The difference between a crew and a company is structure, and structure is what Danielle does, and I'm going to let her do it. She's offered to handle the administrative side: scheduling, billing, client communication. Part-time, on top of teaching, because Danielle Beaumont has more energy than a Gulf hurricane and better organizational skills.

Made a chicken and dumplings — big, fluffy dumplings floating in a rich chicken broth with carrots and celery. Not Cajun, exactly — more Southern, more Appalachian — but it's a dish I love, a dish that says "transition" and "comfort" and "the world is changing and the dumplings don't care." The dumplings are drop dumplings, not rolled: you scoop the batter and drop it into the simmering broth and it puffs and cooks and becomes this light, pillowy thing that absorbs the broth and tastes like a cloud that went to culinary school.

Sixty units. Six months. A company instead of a crew. After Danielle sat me down and laid it all out, I needed something that felt like a hug from the inside — warm broth, tender chicken, soft pasta that gives a little when you bite it. The tortellini in this soup does exactly what those drop dumplings do in my heart: it floats, it puffs, it absorbs everything around it and becomes something better than it started. This is the soup I made the night we decided to grow up as a business, and it tasted exactly right.

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Total Time: 35 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 medium carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds
3 stalks celery, sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
6 cups low-sodium chicken broth
2 cups cooked chicken, shredded (rotisserie works great)
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
Salt and black pepper to taste
9 oz refrigerated cheese tortellini
2 cups fresh baby spinach
Fresh parsley, chopped, for garnish

Instructions

Sauté the aromatics. Heat olive oil in a large pot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the onion, carrots, and celery and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5–6 minutes until the onion is softened and translucent. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute more until fragrant.
Build the broth. Pour in the chicken broth and bring to a gentle boil over medium-high heat. Stir in the Italian seasoning, thyme, salt, and pepper. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed.
Add the chicken. Stir in the shredded cooked chicken. Reduce heat to medium and let the soup simmer for 5 minutes to let the flavors meld together.
Cook the tortellini. Add the cheese tortellini directly to the simmering broth. Cook according to package directions, usually 5–7 minutes, until the tortellini are tender and puffed.
Finish with spinach. Remove the pot from heat and stir in the fresh spinach. Let it wilt for 1–2 minutes. Ladle into bowls, garnish with fresh parsley, and serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Easy Chicken Tortellini Soup — When the Dumplings Don’t Care That the World Is Changing