This Minestrone Soup is guaranteed to warm your soul and get your taste buds dancing. There is something utterly comforting about the minestrone soup. And when it is made right, you’ll go back for seconds and thirds, then you’ll be slurping big bowls of it for dinner and happily have it for lunch next day. My two little effortless tips that take this up a notch and get it ready in just 30 minutes.
Tip number one is use boiled pasta water as the base for this minestrone soup. If you have vegetable stock well and good, if not, don’t worry, use freshly boiled pasta water seasoned with salt and a teaspoon of oil.
And the second magical tip is to use tomato pasta sauce to flavor the soup. Don’t bother about the tomato puree or any other fancy sauce, simply add the best pasta/pizza sauce you have on hand to the soup. And let the magic of flavors happening. These two signature tips always produce a delicious minestrone soup in 30 minutes.
Many minestrone soup recipes suggest cooking pasta and beans in the soup only. You can do so if time is not the constraint. For me boiling them separately and adding to the soup at the last minute works better to save time in the kitchen on a busy weeknight. For the weeknight dinner, I am always sticking to recipes that are quick to prepare, fulfilling and absolutely comforting, like this 30 Minute Minestrone Soup.
The Minestrone Soup is a classic recipe that will work with pretty much any combination of pasta, vegetables or meat. I like to keep mine totally vegetarian with the addition of lots of seasonal vegetables and of course, my favorite cute little elbow pasta. I feel the small, tiny shaped pasta work best for the minestrone soup. Feel free to work with different vegetables like carrot, spinach, snow-peas, fresh peas, kale and so on to create your favorite bowl of minestrone soup.
Serving this minestrone soup with warm toasted bread is not optional. It’s an essential part of relishing the Minestrone Soup experience!
For more such fun recipes in your life, follow along on Facebook, Instagram, or subscribe to our Youtube Channel.
Classic Minestrone Soup Recipe
- Saucepan
Ingredients
- 1 Cup dry elbow pasta
- 4 Tablespoon olive oil or butter
- 1 Tablespoon chopped garlic
- 2 Tablespoon chopped celery stalk
- 1 Whole bay leaf
- 1/4 Cup chopped onion
- 1/4 Cup chopped zucchini
- 1/4 Cup chopped carrot
- 1/4 Cup canned or pre-cooked red beans
- 6 - 8 cherry tomato
- 1 Tablespoon red wine vinegar
- 2 Tablespoon tomato pasta/pizza sauce (get recipe)
- 6 Cup vegetable stock or pasta water boiled
- Salt and black pepper to taste
Ingredients to Garnish
- 2 Tablespoon chopped fresh basil or parsley
- 2 Tablespoon grated parmesan cheese
Instructions
Boil Pasta:
- Boil pasta al-dente in a large pot of water seasoned with salt. Transfer the cooked pasta to a colander or sieve and reserve the boiled pasta water.
Prepare Soup:
- Heat olive oil in a heavy bottom saucepan. Add bay leaf, garlic, celery, and onion. Saute for a minute to release the aroma of the ingredients. No need to brown the onion or garlic.
- Next add the red wine vinegar and stir nicely to glaze the pan.
- Add tomato sauce and stir to combine. Cook for 10 - 20 seconds.
- Add all the vegetables, beans, salt and saute for a minute. Add the warm pasta water or the vegetable stock. Stir to mix. Cover and cook the soup for 5 - 10 minutes over low heat or until vegetables are tender.
- After 10 minutes, add the boiled pasta and mix nicely. Simmer the soup for the next 2 - 3 minutes for the pasta to absorb the flavorsome liquid. Turn off the heat
- Add fresh herbs, and grated cheese. Ladle the soup into the serving bowls.
- Serve Minestrone Soup warm with the slices of toasted bread.
Recipe Notes:
- For soup, always cook the pasta al-dente.
- Try to use pre-cooked or canned beans to make this soup. Uncooked beans will increase the cooking time of the soup. And by the time beans are cooked, other vegetables in the soup will turn mushy. Hence, best to use softer beans or pre-cooked ones.
- Feel free to use red beans, white beans, cannellini beans or any other kind of beans.
- You can use cherry tomato or 1 Cup chopped tomato.
- After adding the pasta do not simmer the soup for too long. Else, pasta might turn mushy.
- Pasta has tendency to absorb liquid. Hence, after adding pasta if required add more stock to get the desired consistency of the soup.
- If you skip adding cheese in the last, this is a 100% vegan soup. Or if we use gluten-free pasta, this soup turns into a gluten-free dish.
2 comments
I really appreciate your professional approach. These are pieces of very useful information that will be of great use for me in future.
nice and informative blog. This is the info I was searching for a long time, thanks for sharing, keep writing such articles.