Minestrone Soup

This minestrone soup recipe is a delicious twist on the classic Italian vegetable soup, perfect to serve with crusty bread for an easy vegetarian meal.

I’m excited to bake Christmas cookies today and then follow it up with a comforting pot of minestrone soup for dinner, a pairing that perfectly complements an afternoon of sweet treats.

This particular minestrone recipe is wonderfully satisfying yet still light and fresh, featuring a flavorful herb-flecked tomato broth enriched with onions, carrots, and celery. It is thickened with beans and pasta and brightened with green beans, fresh parsley, and Parmesan cheese, making it a complete meal with crusty bread. Cookies are an optional dessert but highly recommended.

Minestrone Soup Recipe Ingredients

• Onion, carrot, and celery create the aromatic base of the soup, known as a soffritto in Italian, which you sauté in olive oil before adding the other ingredients.
• Garlic adds additional depth of flavor to the soup and should be stirred in after cooking the onions, carrots, and celery so that it doesn’t burn.
• Diced tomatoes add a sweet, tangy flavor.
• Green beans add vibrant color and a crisp-tender texture to the soup.
• White or kidney beans, such as navy beans, cannellini beans, and red kidney beans, all work great.
• Use store-bought vegetable broth or make your own.
• Bay leaves, oregano, and thyme—a simple homemade Italian seasoning—add so much complexity to this minestrone soup.
• Small pasta, like elbows, little shells, orecchiette, or ditalini, is best cooked right in the soup so it releases its starches into the broth.
• Fresh parsley is great for garnish, and fresh basil would be excellent here too.
• Red pepper flakes are optional for heat, and Parmesan cheese adds a salty, umami touch that takes the soup over the top.

Verations

If you don’t have these exact ingredients on hand, don’t worry because, as Alice Waters writes in The Art of Simple Food, minestrone soup is endlessly customizable.

Part of the beauty of this recipe is that you can change it up to use what’s in season or what you have on hand. For example, you can substitute chopped fennel for the celery.

You can replace the green beans with diced zucchini or yellow squash, or use a mix of all three. In the summer, use diced fresh Roma tomatoes instead of canned ones.

Stir in fresh greens, like spinach or kale, near the end of the cooking time. If you have no pasta, swap in a quick-cooking grain like pearled farro or barley.

You can also cook your own beans and use their aromatic cooking liquid in place of some or all of the vegetable broth. Let me know what variations you try!

Servings Suggestions

This soup tastes best right after you make it because the pasta soaks up the broth as it sits. If you’d like to prepare it in advance, cook the pasta separately and add it to the soup when you’re ready to eat.

You can also leave out the pasta altogether and add an extra cup of beans instead; this version keeps well in the fridge for up to four days. When you’re ready to serve, sprinkle each bowl with parsley, red pepper flakes, and freshly grated Parmesan.

If you’re vegan, skip the cheese and try a spoonful of vegan pesto instead—non-vegans might want to add traditional pesto for extra flavor.

Pair the soup with some crusty bread and call it a meal, or add a side salad for a complete dinner. A fresh arugula, beet, or pear salad would all go perfectly with this minestrone. Enjoy!

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