Recipe for Minestrone Soup Made Easy

A hearty, slow-cooked vegetable soup is just what you need to warm you up on a cold evening. Minestrone has an assortment of seasonal vegetables slowly cooked in meat stock and tomatoes until the vegetables are tender and all the flavours have amalgamated to a rich and mellow flavour.

There are as many variations of Minestrone as there are regions of Italy, or more. In the north, rice is a standard addition, beans in central Italy and in the south plenty of tomato and garlic. This minestrone soup recipe is a basic one, to which you can add other vegetables according to the season, and rice or small pasta shapes as you wish. It is even better eaten the next day and freezes well without the pasta in it, so make a big pot of soup, while you are about it.

Minestrone Soup recipe

Ingredients
Serve 6-8
6 tablespoons olive oil
40g / 1 ½ oz butter
3 large onions finely chopped
4 carrots diced
2 sticks celery diced
250g / 8oz potatoes, peeled and diced
1 tin cannellini beans
2 courgettes
200g / 8oz savoy cabbage, shredded
1.5 litres / 2 ½ pints beef stock
175g / 6oz tinned tomatoes, chopped with their juice
40g / 1 ½ freshly grated parmesan

Ina large pot put the oil, butter and chopped onion and cook gently over a medium low heat until the onion softens and turns a pale gold. Add the carrots and cook for 2 minutes, then add celery, followed by the potatoes and courgettes. Give each vegetable a minute or two, stirring occasionally before tyou put in the nexgt one. Lastly add the shredde cabbage and cook everything for 5 more minutes or so.

Add the tomatoes and their juice and the stock Bring to a simmer and cook over the lowest possible heat for 3 hours. A slow cooker is excellent for this. At the end the soup should be thick and not too watery. If it is too thick you can add water.

Check for seasoning and add salt if necessary, add the cannellini beans (you can use borlotti beans instead if you prefer) and pasta or rice if you are using them and simmer for 10 more minutes. Before serving stir in the parmesan cheese.

Other things you can add to your minestrone soup: bacon or pancetta, green beans, a little garlic, fresh herbs, any other vegetables in season. If you have the end rind of a hunk of parmesan you can throw that into the soup with the stock too for a really wonderful, mellow flavour.

Three hours cooking time too long for you? Why not try the minestrone at one of the Italian restaurants in Nottingham.