Slow Cooker Tortellini Minestrone Soup

The week between Christmas and New Year's, the week that belongs to no one and everyone, the week when the world is in limbo and the kitchen operates on its own schedule, independent of the calendar's confusion. I made Sylvia's cabbage soup — the luck soup, the New Year's soup — and the house smelled like Eastern Europe on a winter evening, which is to say it smelled like survival.

This was a good week. An uncomplicated week. Marvin and I in the house, the furnace working, the snow falling, the soup simmering. He read the newspaper. I wrote for the blog. We ate dinner at the table — just the two of us, as most evenings are now, the children grown and busy with their own lives and their own tables. The two-person dinner is not sad. I need to say this because people assume that a couple eating alone is a diminished thing. It is not. It is a distilled thing. The essence, without the dilution of guests and children and the social performance that accompanies a larger table. At our table, there is no performance. There is Marvin and there is Ruth and there is the food and there is the silence that is not empty but full.

I wrote about New Year's soup on the blog — about Sylvia's cabbage superstition, about the women who brought these traditions from the old country, about how a pot of soup connects me to my grandmother's grandmother, whom I never met, who lived in a shtetl that no longer exists, who made soup from whatever the garden produced because winter was not a season, it was a threat, and the soup was the defense, and the defense held, and I am here, sixty years old, in a kitchen on Long Island, making the same soup, and the defense still holds.

Marvin was asleep by ten. I sat at the kitchen table with the cabbage soup and my journal and wrote about the year. 2017. My second year on the blog. Sixty years old. Thirty-five years married. Two children, two grandchildren (with a third on the way — Jennifer is pregnant again, due in April, and the news fills me with the particular joy that only grandchildren bring: the joy of continuation, of the chain extending, of new people who will eat my soup and carry the taste forward).

At midnight, I said "Happy New Year, Marv" to the sleeping man in the recliner. He didn't hear. It counted anyway. 2018. Whatever it brings. The soup is made. The luck is in the cabbage. The chain holds.

Sylvia’s cabbage soup is the soul of this recipe — the superstition, the tradition, the smell that turns a Long Island kitchen into something older and deeper. Over the years I’ve found that adding cheese tortellini and cannellini beans to the base my grandmother’s generation would recognize transforms it into something that satisfies both the past and the present: a slow cooker minestrone that holds the same luck, the same warmth, and the same quiet insistence that the chain will hold. This is what I simmered the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and this is what I’ll make again when April comes and Jennifer’s baby arrives and there is one more person at the table who will need to learn what cabbage soup means.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 7 hours | Total Time: 7 hours 20 minutes | Servings: 8

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
3 medium carrots, peeled and sliced into coins
3 stalks celery, sliced
3 cups green cabbage, roughly chopped
1 can (15 oz) diced tomatoes, with juices
1 can (15 oz) cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
6 cups low-sodium chicken or vegetable broth
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 Parmesan rind (optional, but recommended)
9 oz refrigerated cheese tortellini
2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Freshly grated Parmesan, for serving

Instructions

Sauté the aromatics. Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute more, until fragrant. Transfer to the slow cooker.
Build the soup base. Add the carrots, celery, cabbage, diced tomatoes with their juices, cannellini beans, broth, Italian seasoning, smoked paprika, salt, and pepper to the slow cooker. Nestle in the Parmesan rind if using. Stir everything together gently to combine.
Cook low and slow. Cover and cook on LOW for 6 to 7 hours, or on HIGH for 3 to 4 hours, until the cabbage is tender and the flavors have deepened and married. Remove and discard the Parmesan rind.
Add the tortellini. Stir the refrigerated tortellini into the hot soup. Cover and cook on HIGH for an additional 15 to 20 minutes, until the tortellini are cooked through and pillowy. Do not overcook.
Finish and taste. Stir in the fresh parsley. Taste and adjust salt and pepper as needed — the soup should be savory, deeply flavored, and just a little bit fortifying.
Serve. Ladle into bowls and top each with freshly grated Parmesan. Serve with crusty bread or Irish soda bread if you have it. Leftovers keep well refrigerated for up to 4 days; the tortellini will absorb more broth as they sit, so add a splash of broth when reheating.

Nutrition (per serving)

Slow Cooker Tortellini Minestrone Soup — Sylvia’s Luck Soup for the New Year’s Table