The chill of fall is in the air and it’s the perfect time of year to cozy up with a piping hot bowl of delicious soup. This is a hearty soup; the perfect dinner to make on a weeknight. Super quick and easy.

At home we call this Meatball Soup but it doesn’t really have meatballs in it. What it does have is fresh pork sausage fried with onions and then it’s combined with stock, pasta and spinach. I started making this because my kids loved the canned Italian wedding soup. I was looking for a cheaper and more plentiful version of it to make at home – one can of soup looks very small when you’re trying to feed a family of hungry boys 🙂

The pasta I use is called Acini di Pepe by Ronzoni. They are very tiny pieces of pasta and it cooks into little pasta balls. It looks like this before it’s cooked:

The tiny pieces of pasta actually look quite large in this photo!

In Portland, you can find this pasta at Freddie’s or Winco. If you can’t find it, any small pasta will do. I serve the soup with bread (the boys love to dip bread into the soup and eat it) and fruit or salad for a fast weeknight dinner.

Sausage and Spinach Soup
serves 4 hungry people plus plenty of leftovers for the next day (it tastes even better!)
adapted from the recipe on the back of Ronzoni’s Acini di Pepe box

1/2 pound bulk sausage
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon olive oil, if needed
2-32 oz. cartons of chicken broth
1 cup Acini di Pepe pasta (or any small pasta)
10-12 oz. frozen chopped spinach

1. In a large pot, cook the sausage over medium high heat, breaking it up into small pieces. When browned and cooked, lift the sausage out of the pot.

2. Add the chopped onion to the pot and cook for 5-10 minutes until soft. Add the olive oil to the pot if there’s not enough oil from the sausage in the pot to fry the onions.

3. Add the chicken broth and bring to a boil.

4. Once boiling, add the pasta to the broth and cook for 10 minutes until the pasta is done. If you used larger sized pasta you may have to cook for a little longer.

5. Add the frozen chopped spinach to the soup along with the reserved sausage.

6. Bring soup back to a simmer and serve.