Minestrone soup is packed with vegetables and hearty beans. This recipe may look simple, but there’s something about the flavor combination that is homey and perfect. I first had homemade minestrone when my sister in law brought it to my house for dinner and shared the recipe. I tweaked it a little and it’s one of my family’s favorite dinners. This meatless soup is still filling and makes a great main dish or side dish. Pair it with fresh crusty bread or your favorite sandwich!
Ingredients and Equipment Needed
- Heavy Soup Pot – this recipe makes a large batch, so you’ll want a nice large soup pot. My favorite is an enamel-coated cast iron pan, like this one.
- Olive oil
- Onion
- Carrot
- Celery
- Zucchini
- Fresh Garlic
- Frozen or canned green beans
- Red kidney beans
- Great Northern beans
- Diced, canned tomatoes
- Dried oregano, basil, and thyme
- Salt and pepper
- Vegetable broth
- Ditalini or other small shell pasta
- Fresh spinach leaves
- Fresh parsley
How to Make Minestrone Soup
- Sauté chopped carrots, celery, and onion.
- Add zucchini and garlic.
- Add the beans and seasonings, as well as a can of tomatoes.
- Add vegetable broth and simmer these ingredients for about 30 minutes. During this time the beans break down a little and help add body to the soup.
- Add the pasta until cooked through.
- At the very end, turn off heat and add fresh spinach and parsley.
Storing and Other Notes
- This a thick soup, which is how my family likes it. You can easily add a little more broth or water at the end to make it the perfect consistency for you!
- Store leftover soup in an airtight container in the fridge and consume within 3-4 days for best results.
- This soup freezes beautifully. Freeze individual portions for a quick weekday lunch!
Frequently Asked Questions
Totally! This soup works great to freeze in portions to heat up later. Sometimes pasta isn’t the best to freeze, but in this soup, the small amount of pasta is almost hidden- it blends in with the veggies so that works great.
Feel free to omit the pasta if you need to, minestrone is still super delicious.
Yes! This soup might even taste better when reheated the next day. Feel free to whip up a batch and enjoy for several days.
Veggie-Packed Minestrone Soup
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 ½ tablespoons olive oil
- 1 onion medium, diced
- 1 carrot, large thinly sliced or finely diced
- 2 celery stalks diced
- 1 zucchini, small diced or shredded
- 4-5 cloves garlic finely minced or pressed
- 1 cup French cut green beans frozen, or used canned if preferred
- 2 15-ounce cans red kidney beans drained and rinsed
- 2 15-ounce cans white beans like Great Northern or Cannellini
- 1 14-ounce can diced tomatoes drained
- 1 ½ teaspoons oregano dried
- 1 teaspoon basil dried
- ½ teaspoon thyme dried
- 1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- 32 ounces vegetable broth (4 cups)
- 3 cups hot water
- ½ cup ditalini or other small shell pasta
- 4-6 cups spinach leaves fresh, loosely packed
- ¼ cup parsley fresh, minced
Instructions
- Heat a large stock pot to medium heat. Add olive oil to coat bottom of pan. Add onions, carrot, and celery. Saute 4-5 minutes, until onions start to look translucent.
- Add zucchini and garlic and cook for 1-2 minutes longer, stirring until garlic is fragrant. Add green beans, kidney and white beans, tomatoes, and seasonings and stir to combine.
- Add broth and water and bring soup to a simmer. Cover pot and simmer on low for 20-25 minutes, until carrots and celery are tender.
- Add pasta and cook until pasta is soft, 8-10 minutes.
- Remove pot from heat and stir in spinach and parsley. Season with additional salt and pepper to taste.
- Feel free to add additional broth or water for a thinner consistency.
- Season with additional salt and pepper to taste, if desired.
Questions & Reviews
This looks delicious and I can’t WAIT to try it! I have a question, not necessarily related to this particular recipe: How do you figure out the nutritional break-down of the recipes? Is there a website that helps you calculate it? If so, do you have any idea how I could figure out the fiber amount? I know, it’s a huge pain for you guys to do all that so I’m just curious how I could figure it myself. Thanks for all the yumminess!
There’s tons of websites where you can pop in a recipe and have it give you the nutritional info, just google and you’ll find a bunch. I’ve used Sparkpeople.com before. I use a Bodybugg calorie counter so my software automatically does that and I track my total daily fiber intake, so it just takes time to look it up for a single recipe. If I remember though, I’ll try to include it!
This soup looks amazing, and perfect for these super-cold days we’re having in Idaho. I don’t have high hopes for my kids eating much of it (they wrote the book on picky) but I’ll just pair it with the sandwiches or, my fallback, garlic bread, and make it anyway!
Your other minestrone is my husband’s favorite soup of all time. So when I make this one, I might just call it veggie soup so he’s not disappointed by the difference. This one looks amazing too. I’ll be making it when my vegetarian sister comes to town.
Oh my gosh, that KITCHEN. I might die.
YUM! I love hearty soups too.
Who knew soup could be so pretty?
This does look delicious. My ques. is about the pasta- is it needed, can I sub. rice or quinoa noodles or just leave it out? I know that probably means it’s not minestrone so to speak but Mr Wheat Allergy means no pasta in this house. Thanks for all the great recipes. Can’t wait to see all of your kitchen! That stove looks wonderful!
You betcha. Leave it out or sub any of the things you mentioned for Mr. Wheat Allergy.
Just use regular quinoa instead of white noodles. It is delish!
This soup looks delicious! Can’t wait to try. I love soup and could eat it every day. My family on the other hand will only allow it once a week. This will be our weekly soup next week.
This looks so good, and I love how healthy it is! Your kids approval must mean it is pretty delicious 🙂
Beans and veggies make the best soups, and yours looks great. Plus, who could resist all those colors.