Chicken and Pastina Soup

If you’re watching your sodium, you can use low-sodium chicken and vegetable broths when you make soup. Sometimes, that can lead to a less flavorsome soup. In that case, we recommend using spices and fresh herbs to add flavor.

This Chicken and Pastina Soup would be great with the addition of an Italian seasoning blend or red pepper flakes if you like a little heat. A light chiffonade of basil or green onions would also be delicious.

Pastina is defined by its size rather than its shape — in Italian, pastina translates to tiny pasta. Anything under ¼-inch long can be called a pastina. Kids love it, and you’ll find pastina in fun shapes, like stars and letters. Because of its wee size, it works great in soups and salads, where it acts as a filler, creating a heartier, more satisfying meal.

Because pastina is such a small pasta, it cooks more quickly than larger noodles, and it can be cooked directly in soups, like this Chicken and Pastina Soup. That said, if you’re meal-prepping a batch of the soup (see the tip above) you may want to cook the pastina separately and add it to the soup when you eat it. Otherwise, those little pastina will soak up a surprising amount of broth!

Unfortunately, pastina does not hold up well in a freezer. So, if you want to freeze your Chicken and Pastina Soup, we’d recommend not adding the pasta until you’re ready to eat it. At that point, you can defrost it, bring it to a gentle simmer, and cook the pastina until tender, according to the package instructions.