Easy, Delicious Minestrone Soup

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Lunch

Main Dish

Gluten-Free

Vegetarian

Vegan

Nut-Free

Dairy-Free

Minestrone soup is easy, delicious, and hearty comfort food that is always a favorite. It is packed with vegetables, hearty beans, hearty broth, and grains (if you want!). Minestrone is a powerful recipe to have in your chef toolkit.

About the recipe

There’s so much to say about minestrone soup! This is truly an ancient recipe with a beautifully rich history, and for good reason. Its Italian origins are famous, but did you know that minestrone is often referred to as “poor man’s soup?”

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That’s because this hearty and nourishing dish has historically been made with whatever combination of vegetables a rural Italian family needed to use up. With a strong tomato bean broth as a base, minestrone has been fueling bodies since as early as the 2nd century. Today, it is a staple in Italian restaurants worldwide.

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This is one of the first dinner recipes I served in my TakeTen program because so many taste buds crave the rich and hearty flavors in this soup. This is a great way to add more vegetables to your day.

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In my recipe, I keep it vegetarian but hearty with beans, potatoes, and optional grains. So many of your daily wellness points can be achieved with this powerful (yet so affordable!) meal. And nothing freezes better than a soup, so feel free to save a couple of servings for later when you’re in a pinch.

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Let’s get simmering!

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Ingredients Directions Nutrition facts

Score point earned (6)

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Ingredients

Makes ~16 cups | 2½ cup serving size for a hearty soup meal

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 red pepper, diced
8 garlic cloves, minced
4 ounces (½ cup) tomato paste
1½ tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon honey
2-3 whole bay leaves
1 teaspoon salt, adjust to taste
1 teaspoon sage, dried crushed
1 teaspoon thyme, dried ground
1 tablespoon dried basil or ½ cup fresh basil, chopped fine
2 teaspoons dried oregano or 2 tablespoons fresh oregano, chopped fine
3 cups canned diced tomatoes or fresh diced tomatoes
2 cups green beans, cut in 1-inch pieces (optional)
2 cups zucchini, sliced, or option of cabbage
1 cup celery, sliced
2 cups carrots, peeled and sliced
3 cups potatoes, diced
6 cups water
3 cups cannellini beans, cooked and drained, or use canned, drained beans
Option: Add 1 cup uncooked whole wheat elbow pasta (Gluten-free option to use quinoa pasta) or option to add ½ cup uncooked whole grains like barley or quinoa.

Directions

Heat a 6-quart saucepan over medium-high heat; add extra virgin olive oil, diced onions, and red peppers. Sauté until softened. Add garlic cloves and cook additional 1 minute.

Add tomato paste, lemon juice, and honey into vegetable mixture, stirring well over medium-high heat for 5 minutes until tomato paste caramelizes. Stir in seasonings of bay leaves, sea salt, sage, thyme, basil, and oregano.

Add canned or fresh tomatoes, diced zucchini, finely sliced celery, and sliced carrots and stir into onion mixture. Cook for an additional 5 minutes.

Add water, diced potatoes, green beans, cooked, drained cannellini, or beans of choice. Bring soup to a boil, then cover and reduce heat to a simmer. Simmer covered for 30 minutes, occasionally stirring until vegetables are cooked through.

Add optional pasta and cook additional 10 minutes or until pasta is cooked. May replace pasta with barley grains and increase cook time additional 30 minutes.

Taste and balance flavor with salt and pepper. Remove bay leaves before serving.

Garnish with fresh herbs like basil and oregano and serve with a side of toasted whole-grain bread and a leafy green salad.

Tips

This recipe is a family favorite and hits all the boxes for hearty, comfort food. The potatoes or the pasta in this soup can be replaced with whole grains like barley or quinoa.

Serve this soup with hearty whole-grain bread toasted to round out a full meal. Or reduce the portion to 1 cup and serve as a starter course to an Italian-inspired dinner.

This soup tastes great when first made, but somehow the flavors infuse even more, and this soup tastes great the next day. It can last up to 5 days stored in a sealed container and refrigerated.

If you want to freeze this soup to have extra ready for that last-minute quick pre-made dinner, make the soup and leave out the potatoes and replace with the whole grains. Potatoes get mushy when they are frozen. Everything else in this soup tastes just as good after being frozen.

When you are making a vegetarian-based soup, it is important to create flavors from herbs and from the caramelization process of the onions. Caramelizing the tomato paste is the critical flavor enhancer for this recipe. When adding the tomato paste, be sure the sugars of the tomato paste are caramelized; you will see this happen in the bottom of the skillet. This step adds a deep rich flavor without having to simmer this soup for hours in a traditional minestrone soup recipe. It is easy to burn the tomato paste when heating to caramelize, so watch this step carefully and continuously stir to prevent burning. As soon as the caramelization starts, it is ready to add the remaining ingredients, and your soup is headed for the best flavor ever.

Choosing the right canned tomatoes can make a difference in this recipe. My favorite canned tomatoes are either Hunts Roma tomatoes or Marzana Italian Roma tomatoes. Fresh tomatoes would be great in this recipe as well, but Roma tomatoes work best, in my opinion, whether fresh or canned.

You can make your beans from scratch in an electric pressure cooker. Add 1½ cups of rinsed, drained cannellini beans with 3 cups of water and cook on the bean setting for 45-60 minutes or until just tender. You can boost the flavor of the beans by cooking them with a bay leaf or two, or any Italian seasonings you enjoy, but do not cook the beans with salt. Salt will make the beans tougher and should only be added to cooked beans. After the beans are cooked, add any salt if desired and then add to the Minestrone Soup at the appropriate step. Beans can be made several days ahead, and cooked beans freeze very well. Canned beans work fine in this recipe because it is simmered for a long time, and the flavors will infuse into the beans, but nothing tastes as delicious as freshly made beans from scratch if you enjoy the process.

Add broccoli or cauliflower to this soup if you want add some cruciferous vegetables to your meal and add another one point to the score.

Serve this hearty Minestrone Soup with a side of green leafy salad to add greens to your day, and add a whole multigrain piece of toasted bread to get more whole grains points.

Nutrition facts

Serving size

2½ cups soup

Amount per serving

Calories

303

Protein

Total carbohydrate

Dietary fiber

Added sugars

Total fat

Cholesterol

omega 3 short chain fatty acids

Sodium

620

Potassium

1405

Vitamin c

Iron

Calcium

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