Minestrone Soup

Minestrone Soup is the kind you eat with a spoon in one hand and bread in the other. Vegetables, beans and small pasta in a deep tomato broth, with Parmesan melting over every bowl. It tastes like it simmered all afternoon.

My Minestrone Soup Starts With What’s In The Fridge

Minestrone is endlessly flexible, which is why every Italian family makes it differently and every single one of them is certain theirs is the correct one.

Mine is a tomato broth with beans, potatoes and a cup of small pasta. By the second day it’s thick enough to stand a spoon in, which I consider a feature.

The one thing I’ll push you on is the Parmesan rind. It’s listed as optional. It is not optional. I’ve simply lost that argument with the recipe card.

What Is Minestrone Soup?

It’s an Italian vegetable soup with beans and pasta in a tomato broth. That’s the whole definition, and the looseness is the point. There was never one official version, because it started as a method rather than a recipe: whatever vegetables are around, beans for substance, a little pasta to fill it out.

It’s said min eh STROH nee. 4 syllables, stress on the third. Not “min STROHN.”

What’s usually in it: onion, carrot, celery, garlic, tomatoes, beans, broth and something small and starchy. After that it’s regional and seasonal and nobody’s going to arrest you.

Mine is vegetarian as written, since it’s built on vegetable broth. Not vegan, because of the Parmesan rind and the Parmesan on top. Leave both out and you have a vegan soup. You’ve also removed the best part of it, so make that choice with your eyes open.

Ingredients For Minestrone Soup

• Olive oil (3 tablespoons): For softening the vegetables at the start.
• Onion (1 large, chopped), carrots (2 medium, chopped) and celery (2 stalks, chopped): The base. About 5 minutes together, until everything’s gone soft. Don’t rush this part, it’s the floor the rest of the soup stands on.
• Garlic (3 cloves, minced): At the end of the sauté, 30 seconds only.
• Potatoes (2 medium, peeled and chopped): These turn it from a starter into dinner. Yellow squash, zucchini or green beans go in their place.
• Red kidney beans (15 ounces, 1 can, drained and rinsed): Great Northern or cannellini work too. Rinse them properly or that canning liquid clouds your broth.
• Diced tomatoes (28 ounces, 1 can): Or 2 of the small 15 ounce cans.
• Tomato paste (¼ cup): This is the difference between tomato broth and tomato water.
• Vegetable broth (6 cups, low sodium): Chicken broth if you’re not keeping it vegetarian. Low sodium matters here because a Parmesan rind brings its own salt.
• Italian seasoning (1 tablespoon), salt (1 teaspoon), pepper (1 teaspoon), onion powder (1 teaspoon): I use my own Italian Seasoning blend.
• Bay leaves (2): In with the broth, out before serving.
• Pasta (1 cup, small): Ditalini is what I use. Elbows, small shells and orzo are all fine.
• Parmesan rind (1, technically optional): I’m not going to pretend I’m neutral about this one.
• Lemon juice (1 tablespoon, freshly squeezed): Right at the end. You won’t taste lemon. You’ll taste everything else more clearly, which is a strange sentence until you’ve done it.

How To Make Minestrone Soup

Soften the vegetables: Heat the 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a large Dutch oven or soup pot over medium high heat. Add the chopped onion, carrots and celery and cook about 5 minutes, until soft and the onion is translucent.

Add the garlic: Stir in the 3 minced garlic cloves and cook 30 seconds, just until you can smell it.

Build the pot: Add the chopped potatoes, drained beans, Italian seasoning, salt, pepper, onion powder, bay leaves, tomato paste, diced tomatoes, vegetable broth and the pasta. Drop in the Parmesan rind if you’re using one.

Simmer: Bring to a boil, then reduce to medium and cook 15 to 20 minutes, until the pasta is tender. The range depends on your pasta, since ditalini takes longer than elbows. Start tasting at 15.

Finish: Fish out the bay leaves and the Parmesan rind. Stir in the 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and cook 1 minute more.

Serve: Grated Parmesan over every bowl, and be generous about it.

We’ve made this recipe about six times in the last four weeks. It is so easy and yet so tasty! Thank you!

Using A Parmesan Rind In Minestrone Soup

The rind is the hard outer edge of a wedge of Parmesan, the part that defeats your grater. Most people throw it away. Most people are wrong.

Dropped into a pot of soup, it softens slowly and gives off everything that makes Parmesan taste like Parmesan. The broth comes out savory and deep, the way soup tastes after hours on the stove instead of 20 minutes. It won’t melt into strings and it won’t make the soup cheesy. It just makes it taste like somebody who knew what they were doing made it.

When to add it: at the start, with the broth. It needs the whole simmer to do anything at all.

When to take it out: with the bay leaves, before serving. It’ll be soft and slightly chewy by then. Some people eat it standing at the stove. I’m not going to name names.

Where to get them: save them. Every time you finish a wedge, the rind goes in a bag in the freezer. They keep for months and you’ll never be caught out. A lot of cheese counters will also sell you a bag of rinds for almost nothing, because they know exactly what you’re up to and they approve.

No rind? There’s no true substitute and I’d rather tell you that than invent one. Extra grated Parmesan stirred in at the end gets you partway there. Then start a rind bag, because this is going to keep happening.

Slow Cooker Minestrone Soup

This works in a crockpot with 1 adjustment, and the adjustment isn’t optional.

Soften the onion, carrots, celery and garlic in a pan first, then move everything except the pasta and the lemon juice into the slow cooker. Low 6 to 8 hours or high 3 to 4.

Add the pasta in the last 20 to 30 minutes, on high. Pasta that spends 6 hours in a slow cooker becomes wallpaper paste and takes the broth down with it. There is no coming back from this.

Stir in the lemon juice at the very end, same as the stovetop. The Parmesan rind goes in at the start and stays the whole time. It’ll be remarkably soft when you fish it out.

Minestrone Soup Variations

• Vegetables: Zucchini, yellow squash, green beans, spinach or kale all work. Add the soft ones in the last 5 minutes, unless you want them to dissolve into the broth, which some people genuinely prefer and I’m not here to argue.
• With meat: Brown ½ pound of Italian sausage or ground beef with the onions and drain it before anything else goes in. Switch to chicken broth if you go this way.
• Chicken minestrone: Stir in 2 cups of shredded rotisserie chicken in the last 5 minutes. This is the lazy version and it’s excellent.
• Beans: Cannellini and Great Northern are both lovely here. Chickpeas work. Black beans change the entire personality of the soup, but if that’s what’s in the cupboard, then that’s what’s in the cupboard.

Storing And Reheating

Fridge: 4 days in an airtight container.

Now, the honest part about pasta cooked in soup: it never stops drinking. By day 2 this is a very thick soup and by day 3 it’s a stew that’s stopped pretending. I love it that way. If you don’t, add broth or water when you reheat and it loosens right back up.

Making it ahead on purpose? Cook the pasta separately and add it to the bowls instead of the pot. The soup keeps its broth and you can reheat it as often as you like. I don’t bother on a weeknight, but it’s the right call for a freezer batch.

Freezer: 3 months, and I’d freeze it without the pasta for the reason above. Reheat from frozen over low heat and add fresh cooked pasta at the end.

Reheating: Low and slow on the stove with a splash of broth. A bowl in the microwave is perfectly fine and I won’t tell anyone.

Other Recipes You’ll Love

To go with it:

• Quick Yeast Dinner Rolls
• Cheddar Cheese Buttermilk Biscuits

More soup:

• Tuscan Bean Soup
• Sausage and Bean Soup
• Instant Pot Chicken Noodle Soup
• Chicken Barley Soup
• Creamy Loaded Potato Soup
• Instant Pot Zuppa Toscana
• Manly Bean Chili on All My Cravings, for anyone at your table who insists soup isn’t dinner