Minestrone soup

Minestrone soup is a thick soup of Italian origin made with vegetables, often with the addition of pasta or rice, sometimes both. Common ingredients include legumes, onions, celery, carrots, stock, tomatoes, and seasonal vegetables.

The beauty of this soup is that you can make it many times, and have it taste differently every time you make it. Minestrone soup can be made up of your choice of vegetables. You can add pumpkin, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, or any leafy vegetables.

There is no set recipe for Italian minestrone soup but there are some basic concepts of choosing and cooking vegetables, legumes, and pasta. It always starts with sofrito which is slowly cooking the mix of onion, carrot, and celery.

The recipe and inspiration comes from Chef Vincenzo. The recipe for Minestrone soup is on this page.

 

Note:

Tbsp = tablespoon

Soffrito is a mixture of slowly cooked carrots, onions, and celery, used as a base to add flavour to sauces, soups and stews. The vegetables are roughly chopped into small pieces and cooked in olive oil over low heat until soft and just shy of brown or golden.

 

How to make Minestrone soup

1. Chop the celery stalk, carrots and onion into cubes or small pieces.
2. Place a large pot onto the stove at a medium heat. Once it starts to warm, sprinkle between 5 tbsp of olive oil and let it heat up.
3. When the oil is warm, add the chopped celery, carrot, and onion. Stir and mix. This process is called the “soffrito”.
4. Gently stir the soffrito every now and then to make sure they are moistened with the oil and is cooking well.
5. While the soffrito is cooking, chop up the potato and zucchini into small cubes and try and to maintain a similar size for all the vegetables.
6. Once the minestrone soup soffrito has been simmering for at least 10 minutes, add the dry herbs and potato and zucchini and stir them through.
7. Add vegetable stock and just enough water to cover them. Then leave this to cook for 20 minutes with the lid on, again stirring every so often.
8. Next, cut up the rest of your vegetables. In this case, long beans, fresh tomatoes, and kale.
9. Now add the lentils, cannellini beans, long beans, tomatoes, kale, and tomato puree before once again covering the vegetables with water and leaving this to cook for 20 minutes, with the lid on top. Stir and mix every 5 minutes.
10. While the minestrone soup is simmering, commence boiling water with 1 tbsp of salt in another pot. Place the fusilli in the boiling water for 11 minutes or per the instruction on the packaging until al dente. Set the fusilli aside and transfer them to individual bowls for serving.
11. Add salt and pepper to the minestrone soup and stir through well so all the ingredients are all well mixed.
12. Turn off the stove after 10 minutes or once your vegetables have softened and add chopped parsley.
13. Scoop out the minestrone soup into the bowls containing the fusilli, mix them and sprinkle a small amount of pepper and grated cheese on top.

 

Prep and Cook Time: 70 mins

 

Cuisine inspiration: Italian

 

Servings: 4

 

Ingredients

 

Main

200 g fusilli or ditalini if available

5 tbsp olive oil

1 large size onion finely chopped

1 to 2 large size carrots finely chopped

1 celery stalk finely chopped

½ tbsp black pepper powder

10 tbsp tomato puree

1 to 2 cups water – to adjust as required

1 cup vegetable stock

1 tbsp salt added to boiling pasta

1 tbsp salt for cooking – to adjust as required

4 to 6 tbsp chopped parsley

Grated cheese – added prior to serving

 

Dry herbs

½ tbsp dry oregano

½ tbsp dry thyme

½ tbsp dry rosemary

 

Legumes

100 g lentils. Rinse and soak in water for 30 minutes before using.

1 can 400g (net weight 240g) cannellini beans. Draining and rinse with water before using.

 

Other vegetables – all chopped into small cubes

1 zucchini.

2 medium size tomatoes.

1 large potato.

100 g long beans.

100 g kale.