Warm up to a bowl of this delicious and hearty Crock-Pot Creamy Italian Sausage Soup with Pasta. This soup provides all the flavors of Italy in a lovely soup that really hits the spot on a cold winter day!
Slow Cooker Creamy Italian Sausage Soup with Pasta
This recipe is sponsored by De Cecco pasta.
It’s winter! The weather here in Wyoming has been in the 20’s and 30’s with snow off and on for the last week. There is NOTHING I like more on a blustery day than sitting around the table with my family and enjoying a nice hot bowl of soup.
Soup is usually an inexpensive and practical option when you are needing to feed your family. Most soups start with the basic soup veggies like onions and carrots. Some sort of broth, stock or water and then your meat.
In this Italian inspired soup I went with the flavors of sweet Italian sausage for which I played up that sausage flavor with some additional fennel seeds which really adds a nice flavor to the soup.
The pasta used in this recipe was provided to us by De Cecco and I have to say that their pasta tastes differently than other pastas. Many of the cheaper brands of pasta (and hey I am feeding a family of 8 these days and I am not ashamed to say that price of pasta is important) are made with cheaper ingredients. But not De Cecco pasta, their pasta is made from a family recipe straight from Italy with coarse durum semolina wheat.
Durum semolina is made from the purest part of the “hard” wheat variety. Most mainstream pastas are made with just plain flour. Using durum semolina instead of flour means that your pasta cooks up perfectly every time and stays firm. Even in a slow cooker soup! Yes, the pasta in this dish IS cooked to al dente on the stove top and then added to the slow cooker in the last bit of the cooking time. BUT the pasta held up beautifully and did not turn to mush as most other pastas have a tendency to do.
There is carrots and onions, sure and of course garlic. Then some canned fire roasted tomatoes rounds things out nicely.
In my windowsill I grow a couple of potted herbs and decided to use some fresh oregano, basil and rosemary. If you don’t grow your own you can easily buy fresh herbs in the grocery store or use dried.
To make the soup creamy, but not TOO creamy a little cream cheese is added near the end of the soups cooking time a little bit before you add the cooked pasta. The cream cheese melts beautifully into the soup in about 30 minutes and then you are ready to serve your family this delicious soup.
We paired our hot bowls of soup with some nice crusty Italian bread from the local bakery. We love to dip our bread into our soup and sop up that beautiful soup liquid.
Even leftovers (we had like 1 bowl worth leftover for lunch for me the next day – lucky me) held up nicely without limp pasta. From now on I really think De Cecco pasta is going to be the pasta I use in any future crock-pot recipes because let’s face it, slow cooking is not always pasta friendly!
Special Diets
Crock-Pot Creamy Italian Sausage Soup with Pasta Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 pound Italian Sausage (cooked and crumbled on the stove top)
- 1 medium Yellow Onion (diced)
- 6 large Carrots (peeled and sliced)
- 6 cloves Garlic (minced)
- 28 ounces Canned Fire Roasted Diced Tomatoes (with juices)
- 32 ounces Beef Stock
- ¼ cup Fresh Basil (roughly chopped (or 1 tablespoon dried basil))
- 1 tablespoon Fresh Oregano (roughly chopped (or 1 teaspoon dried oregano))
- 1 tablespoon Fresh Rosemary (roughly chopped (or 1 teaspoon dried rosemary))
- 1 teaspoon Fennel Seeds
- 8 ounces Cream Cheese (softened at room temperature)
- 1 pound Farfalle Pasta (De Cecco brand recommended )
Instructions
- In a 6 quart or larger slow cooker combine all ingredients except the cream cheese and pasta.
- Cover and cook on LOW for 6 to 8 hours or until the carrots are and onions are cooked through and tender.
- During the last 30 minutes of cooking time bring a large pot of water to boil on the stove top and cook box of pasta according to the directions on box until pasta is al dente.
- While pasta is cooking add cubed softened cream cheese to the soup in the Crock-Pot. Cover and let cook for 30 minutes.
- Drain cooked pasta in a colander and add to the crock-pot. Stir everything together to distribute melted cream cheese and pasta evenly into soup.
- Serve hot with crusty Italian bread to dip into soup and enjoy!
Nutrition
This recipe was sponsored by De Cecco pasta, a pasta brand that you can trust, made with real ingredients and semolina flour. We love this authentic Italian pasta!
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