This easy stelline soup is the perfect combination of little star pasta with vegetables to make such a simple comfort & cozy meal.
I love making soups for dinner, they cook with little effort and leftovers make for great and easy meals that just need warming up.
While I cook this orzo soup with leftover turkey or this chicken rice soup in the pressure cooker, or this chicken pastina soup with rotisserie chicken etc – feel free to switch cooking methods or ingredients in these soups to accomodate what you have available or how much time you have to put dinner on the table.
Stelline Pasta
I grew up in Albania across the Adriatic from Italy and in the 90s it was very popular to watch Italian TV in my home country. That’s where I first saw the stelline pasta before I even got to try them. Now that I live in Florida, I find this type of pasta easier to find in the International section of the grocery store.
Stelline in Italian means little stars (stella means star). This pasta takes its name from the easily recognizable star shape. The star pasta has a tiny hole in the middle. My kids love it as they find it very cute. They always ask to make bracelets with stelline:).
See below for the brand I am able to find and how the pasta looks like. Your markets might have a completely different brand availability so feel free to explore.
Ingredients for this soup
While the star of this soup recipe is the Stelline Pasta, there are so many other ingredients that make this soup a success.
- Vegetables like onions, celery, carrots and red pepper. I love to dice these veggies really small so they don’t look too big compared to the star pasta.
- Garlic – about 2 cloves minced or crushed.
- Olive oil – I saute the veggies in olive oil.
- Vegetable stock or Chicken stock – I tend to alternate between these two based on what I have available. Chicken stock will make for a richer soup while vegetable stock will enhance the vegetable flavors.
- Seasonings – since this is a quick soup, I tend to use Italian seasonings to add flavor. You can add individual seasonings like oregano or thyme etc to taste.
- Salt and pepper – I tend to use fine sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper for this soup. Add salt to taste especially since the stock might already have salt so adjust as you go. I add black pepper as the soup is cooking but also to my plate.
- Fresh Italian parsley – not only it adds flavor but I love the color contrast it provides.
- Butter (optional) – if using vegetable stock I add a tablespoon of butter towards the end in the pot.
How to Cook this Soup?
This is a very simple soup to make. I follow these very simple steps.
- Prep the veggies and dice them.
- Saute the veggies in olive oil.
- Add veggie or chicken stock and season with herbs, salt, pepper etc.
- Once it boils for few minutes, add the pasta in.
- Simmer until al dente or to desired consistency. Serve with some bread or side dish of choice:). Enjoy!
Sonila’s Notes and Tips on the Recipe
Occasionally I would add some spinach to the soup in the last minute of cooking or so as it wilts fast and it adds more veggies to this delicious soup. Feel free to add some:).
You can substitute stelline pasta with any small pasta like pastina, orzo or ditalini.
I usually don’t add chicken to this soup but you definitely can add it for more protein or added consistency.
Store leftovers in the refrigerator in an airtight container for few days. Warm up leftovers in the microwave or soup pot and add some water or vegetable stock as soup tends to get really thick when storing.
Easy Stelline Soup
Equipment
- 1 Large Soup Pot
Ingredients
- 1 white onion
- 1 cup diced carrots
- 1 cup diced celery
- 1 red pepper
- 2 tbsps olive oil
- 2 garlic cloves
- 6 cups chicken stock or vegetable stock
- 1 tbsp Italian Seasoning
- 1.5 cup stelline
- 1 lemon
- 4 tbsps fresh Italian parsley add more for garnish if desired at the end
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 tbsp butter (optional) Usually I add butter at the end if using vegetable stock but not when I use chicken stock.
Instructions
- Dice onion, carrot sticks, celery and red pepper as fine as possible. Mince or crush the garlic.
- Heat olive oil in a soup pot in medium heat, once oil is shimmery add the garlic and stir with a wooden spoon. As soon as garlic is aromatice, add the diced onions, carrots, pepper and celery. Stir slowly as the veggies are softening.
- Pour in the chicken or vegetable stock and once it starts boiling let cook for few minutes. Add in Italian seasoning and some freshly cracked black pepper at this point. Also add salt to taste and stir. Finally add in the stelline pasta and stir so they don't stick to the bottom of the pot.
- Lower heat to simmer. Add in some freshly chopped Italian parsley and cover the pot.
- In about 10 minutes check for consistency and that the stelline pasta are al dente. Add juice of half a lemon too.
- If using vegetable stock, I love to add a tablespoon of butter at the end to make the soup more flavorful and creamy. I don't add the butter when using chicken stock.
- Stir and serve with your favorite bread! Garnish with more fresh parsley and add freshly cracked black pepper to each individual plate as desired. Enjoy:)
Notes
- Carrots – for this recipe I like to use carrot sticks so I can dice them quickly. I use about a cup of diced carrots but since I use carrots sticks, I’m not sure how many carrots that equals. I’d say from eyeballing it’s about 2 carrots.
- Salt – obviously add salt to taste but be mindful of salt in vegetable or chicken stock.
- Black pepper – I love using freshly cracked black pepper both in the soup as it is cooking as well as adding a pinch over my plate as I’m about to eat it. It adds so much flavor!
- Butter – I only add the butter if using vegetable stock but not when using chicken stock.
- Leftovers – if you have any leftovers store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Be mindful that the soup will be very thick once refrigerated. Add it to a medium soup bowl and freel free to add a little water or more stock to make it more runny/soupy as you warm up the leftovers.
Nutrition Label
Nutrition
You can use any small pasta you can find. Orzo, pastina or alphabet pasta make for great substitutions.
You can but honestly, you’d spend more time to pressurize the pressure cooker and depressurize than it takes to cook the soup in a soup pot. This is one of those recipes you just cook in the stovetop with a heavy bottomed soup pot.
If you would like to save this recipe for later, please pin any of the soup pictures to your boards in Pinterest for easy access in the future. Let me know in comments if you have any questions or feedback, I love hearing from you. Thank you for reading my blog:).
More Soup Recipes
Soups can be starters, full meals on their own or even light meals on the go. They can warm you up on cold winter nights or refresh and provide protein on hot summer days (chilled soups).
So if you love soups like we do feel free to check out some more recipes from my blog.
- Red Lentils Soup
- Tomato and Chickpea Soups
- Leeks, Butternut Squash and Potatoes Soup
- Lentils Soup with Ham
- Mediterranean Lentil Soup
- Black Eyed Peas Soup with Pancetta
- Beef Barley Soup
Alicia
Excellent recipe!
I did make a couple additions and changes. I have Celiac Disease, so must eat gluten free. So I used GF Stelline pasta, Jovial brand. GF pastas need extra liquid, so I used 8 cups of chicken broth instead of 6.
I added two cans of the Costco canned chunk chicken (drained) for extra protein.
I didn’t measure the Italian seasoning, but it was definitely more than a tablespoon.
Sonila
Thank you so much Alicia, I really appreciate the feedback and thank you for sharing your adjustments. I hope they can help someone else using same GF pasta as you do:). And I agree with you on seasonings, sometimes I add more especially when I am eyeballing. Thank you again and have a great day!