Minestrone Recipe
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Minestrone—brimming with vegetables, pasta, and beans in a full-flavored broth—is one of the best-known soups around. It’s healthy, filling, and easy to make.
What to buy: For a slacker solution, buy high-quality canned white beans and replace the bean-cooking liquid with water.
Game plan: This soup is even tastier the day after it’s made, when the flavors have had a chance to meld.
We used chicken broth in this recipe to give it a heartier flavor, but you can substitute high-quality vegetable broth to make it vegetarian.
This recipe was featured as part of our Supercharge with Superfoods photo gallery.
- 1 cup dried cannellini beans
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter (1/4 stick)
- 2 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
- 1/2 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
- 2 medium garlic cloves, peeled and minced
- Salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 1 small russet potato, medium dice
- 2 medium celery stalks, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced
- 1 medium carrot, peeled, halved lengthwise, and thinly sliced
- 1 medium bay leaf
- 1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes with juices
- 6 ounces green beans, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces
- 1 medium zucchini, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise
- 1/2 cup frozen peas
- 4 cups (1 quart) low-sodium chicken broth
- 3/4 cup ditalini, tubettini, or other small pasta
- 1/2 cup finely chopped Italian parsley (from about 1/2 bunch)
- Grated Parmesan or pecorino cheese, for garnish
- Place the beans in a large saucepan, fill it with about 5 cups of heavily salted water, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to low and cook, covered, until the beans are tender all the way through, about 2 hours. Reserve 4 cups of the bean-cooking liquid. Drain the beans and reserve.
- Heat the butter and measured oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. Once the butter foams, add the onion and garlic and cook until the onion is soft and translucent, about 5 minutes. Season well with salt and pepper. Add the potato, celery, carrot, and bay leaf and stir to coat. Cook until the celery is just soft, about 4 minutes. Add the tomatoes with their juices, season with salt and pepper, stir (scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan), and cook until the juices are almost completely reduced, about 2 minutes.
- Add half of the green beans, half of the zucchini, half of the peas, and the broth and let simmer, stirring occasionally, until the zucchini just begins to soften, about 10 minutes. Stir in the reserved beans and bean-cooking liquid; the remaining green beans, zucchini, and peas; the pasta; and half of the parsley and simmer until the pasta is al dente, about 10 to 15 minutes.
- Remove from the heat, stir in the remaining parsley, taste, and adjust the seasoning as needed. To serve, place the soup in bowls, garnish with a drizzle of olive oil, sprinkle with the grated cheese, and season with pepper.
Beverage pairing: Masi Bonacosta Valpolicella, Italy. This soup has a wonderful medley of textures, so it’s nice to pair it with something smooth and easy that won’t get in the way. With its beans and root vegetables, minestrone is earthy in flavor, making it a good match for something of contrast, hence this simple but lovely Valpolicella. Made with a blend of grapes from Italy’s eastern coast, it has clear notes of cherry and plum and a light, soft finish.
Great Stuff. I went little strong on the pepper, but even our kids liked it.
Yes, rdizzle! DO roast the veggies to get a more flavorful stock :) Oh, and at The New Deli (and other restaurants making their own soups, I'm sure), we add the pasta when serving. Otherwise, if you have leftovers, the pasta is like a sponge; absorbs all the broth, and gets really fat! (For those folks making a big batch...)
yes every italian has their own and the main difference is probably the fact that no chicken stock or meat. The secret is called soffritto!
I recall growing up on Saturdays, my mom turning my father loose on preparing his own meals. He'd take a few cheap hot dogs and slice them up like sausage cross sections and adding them. Sprinkle parmesan cheese on your bowl and eat with sour dough rolls. Pretty good meal.
I made this with homemade vegetable stock because other comments suggested authentic minestrone is not made with chicken stock. i also added basil towards the end. but it ended up pretty bland. should i have roasted my vegetables (the ones for the stock) first before adding them to the stock pot? i have heard that can make a difference.
No spinach/escarole, no Basil, no red wine????????? Just ok until I added the afformentioned ingredients. So-so recipe........I guess every Italian has their own version.
The restaurant trick is true! We do this all the time at The New Deli. Keep the drained pasta separate if you're not eating it all in one sitting. Do this for soups with rice in them too! One exception: I haven't noticed barley soup getting mushy like the others. Holds its texture nicely...
This recipe sounds sooooooooo good! I think I will make it this weekend! I have most of the ingredients. I will definitely use vegetable broth instead of chicken as one commenter suggested. I am always looking for good vegetarian recipes! Thanks!
Cook the pasta separately and add to the soup just before you are ready to eat.otherwise the pasta gets too mushy if left in the soup when you plan to eat the day after.
Very nice, i keep eating this for days now and it just doesn't get boring (made it with homemade vegetable stock FWIW).
Does anyone know the point of adding 1/2 the green beans, zucchini and peas, cooking for 10 minutes, and then adding the rest. Why not add them all at the same time?
You can cut the time down by using canned beans that been rinsed of the bean goo, I actually like to use both red kidney and white cannelloni beans. I also save my old Parmesan Reggiano crusts to toss into soup like this during the last 1/2 hour of simmering. Most Italian cooks would use salted water, not chicken broth for this soup to let the taste of the vegetable shine. The addition of few sprigs of Thyme, tied with a string and removed later was the missing element in this recipe This rustic dish was devised to use up leftovers, so I empty my vegetable drawer in the fridge when I make soups like this, anything that is getting a bit old and droopy looking, but not spoiled yet is great for soup. Any small tubular pasta works here, so use that half open box of whatever you have. I'd skip the green beans unless you plan to consume all of the soup in one meal, since they get really mushy overnight.
I come from a long line of Italian cooks and I have to say that this is the Best soup I have ever tasted .
Wetbones1
Made last night so we could have something hot to eat all weekend. It's freezing in New England. Thought it was very good. Added some tomato paste at the end to thicken it up a bit
Soup, it's a wonderful meal!
If you're not going to consume the whole pot in one sitting you might want to cook the pasta separate and just add the desired amount to each bowl upon serving. That way it doesn't get all mushy.
Restaurant trick.
Thanks for the idea. I was thinking of making a pot soup this week and your recipe is pretty close to the way I would make it.
I totally agree on the chicken stock, omit it. My Minestrone may be a tad nontraditional but I use cabbage, celery, carrots and onions to make broth. I use the parts that aren't "soup worthy" the stalks, end pieces, hearts, etc.. and brown and simmer them. Once I have the vegi broth I make the soup with:
Cabbage
Zucini
Celery
Carrots
Onions
Garlic
cannellini beans (canned, cause its easier to time with the rest of the veggies)
green beans
fresh tomatoes (skinned, diced - i find canned tomatoes awful too much artificial acids for preserving)
pasta
A little browning of the aromatics and de-glazing with some white wine never hurts either.
What is this CHOW obsession that every friggin' soup recipe has to use chicken broth?????? Basta! Enough already!! (oh, wait, I get it - must be an sponsor advertising issue??)
As for it tasting like a Pakistani sewer, I tend to doubt that....I'd venture a guess that said sewer does NOT have the pervasive flavour of chicken broth.
Why bother with all the great vegetables only to overpower their delicate blend of flavours? here's a culinary fact: Soups made with chicken broth, regardless of what they may contain, will always taste essentially the same. They'll just be "a buncha chick-broth-flavoured liquid and stuff that floats around in it".
Anyway, the really great Italian cooks I know would never "pervert" their minestrone that way. it's meant to be a vibrant celebration of the blended vegetable characteristic flavours.
Instead, try it this way... substitute simple vegetable stock or water and an extra pinch of salt (if necessary - taste first!). Oh, and skip the bay leaf; it's an unnecessary and disharmonius note with so many veggies.
I didn't use the following because I didn't have them on hand:
* potato, green beans, zucchini, peas, parsley, cheese
I omitted the oil (oversight) and used penne (it was what I had on hand) and when it was all said and done ... slamin'! Definitely worth a try.
I'll take you word for it as to the taste of a Pakistani sewer Soophie (by the way do you use a fork or a spooon?). I Have made this recipe and found it to be very good
yes, this recipe tastes like a pakistani sewer..no thank you..
I made this soup this weekend and it was very tasty.
yuuuummmm