Description
Easy minestrone soup recipe with vegetables, beans, and pasta that’s perfect for busy weeknight dinners and uses ingredients you probably already have.
Ingredients
For the Soup Base:
- 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 medium yellow onion, diced
- 2 medium carrots, chopped
- 2 ribs celery, thinly sliced (I buy those bags from Kroger because I’m lazy)
- 1 teaspoon sea salt, plus more to taste
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 3 garlic cloves, grated (just chop them if your grater’s in the dishwasher)
The Heart of the Soup:
- 1 (28-ounce) can diced tomatoes (with juices) (Great Value brand works perfectly fine)
- 1½ cups cooked white beans or kidney beans, drained and rinsed
- 1 cup chopped green beans (those frozen steamable bags are perfect)
- 4 cups vegetable broth (whatever’s cheapest at the store)
Seasonings & Finishing Touches:
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- ¾ cup small pasta (elbows, shells, or orecchiette)
- ½ cup chopped fresh parsley
- Red pepper flakes (optional, for heat)
- Grated Parmesan cheese (optional, for serving)
Instructions
Pour olive oil in your pot and heat it over medium. Add onions, carrots, celery, salt, and black pepper. Stir every couple minutes for about 8 minutes until everything gets soft and starts smelling amazing. Don’t crank the heat up – I did this once and burned everything because I was impatient.
Grate or chop the garlic and stir it around for maybe a minute until it smells so good you want to just eat it with a spoon. This is when Dave usually wanders into the kitchen asking what smells so good and when will dinner be ready.
Pro Tip: Watch the garlic like a hawk because it goes from perfect to completely burned in literally fifteen seconds. I’ve had to start over because burnt garlic ruins everything and tastes horrible.
Dump in tomatoes with all the juice, both kinds of beans, broth, bay leaves, oregano, and thyme. Stir everything together, slap a lid on it, and let it simmer for 20 minutes. I usually use this time to clean up my disaster of a kitchen because I’m apparently incapable of cooking neatly.
Take off the lid, add pasta, and cook 10 more minutes without covering. The soup gets thicker and pasta gets perfectly done. Emma always tries to fish out pasta pieces during this part even though it’s not ready yet.
Fish out bay leaves before someone bites one and complains. Taste and add more salt and pepper – it always needs way more salt than I think it will. Serve with parsley, red pepper flakes if you like spicy, and loads of cheese.
Notes
Don’t rush that first cooking step where the vegetables get soft. That’s literally what makes the difference between good soup and weird vegetable water. I tried to speed it up once when I was running late for Emma’s dance class and everyone could tell something was off.
Save parmesan rinds in your freezer and throw one in while it’s cooking. My friend Lisa taught me this and it makes everything taste like you’ve been simmering soup all day instead of throwing it together in thirty minutes. Just remember to fish it out before serving.
If your soup tastes boring, add vinegar or lemon juice instead of just dumping in more salt. Sometimes soup needs brightness, not saltiness. I over-salted so many things before Lisa taught me this trick.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 30 minutes
- Category: Soup
- Method: Stovetop
- Cuisine: Italian
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1½ cups
- Calories: 285
- Sugar: 8g
- Sodium: 750mg
- Fat: 6g
- Saturated Fat: 1g
- Unsaturated Fat: 4.5g
- Trans Fat: 0g
- Carbohydrates: 48g
- Fiber: 8g
- Protein: 12g
- Cholesterol: 0mg