Italian Minestrone Soup
Italian Minestrone Soup combines an array of veggies, white beans, and orecchiette pasta with a bold tomato broth and a touch of pesto sauce. This flavorful soup will warm your belly and get you coming back for seconds!
Soup Season at our home looks like constant rotations of flavors and textures. We love a spicy Turkey Taco Soup, some delicious Sweet Potato Curry Soup, or this healthy Detox Lentil Soup any given night of the week!
Minestrone Soup
While food is my love language, soup is my cool-weather love language if that’s a thing. When fall weather comes, or even a little earlier (cuz TEXAS), I’m making all the soups. Following a recipe is a good thing when you are susceptible to making soup for 20 instead of four.
I mean, if vegetables are good for you, let’s just add more! Which is why creating these soup recipes (thus putting a limit on ingredients) is so important for me so we can avoid eating the same thing five nights in a row. You’re welcome, family.
Reasons to make a big pot of soup!
- It’s a great way to use up those veggies that aren’t looking so great anymore.
- There are so many different versions of great healthy eating.
- One-pot cooking saves time and dishes.
- Leftovers are great as long as we’re being reasonable.
- It’s a cheaper way to cook, especially the meatless versions (like this one).
Let’s make soup, y’all! 😀
Ingredient Notes:
The ingredient list seems long, but there are eight types of fresh veggies in this soup! It’s really easy to make but does include some knife skills. 😀
- Base Veggies – Onion, garlic, carrots, celery, and cabbage slaw (or use regular cabbage).
- Other Veggies – Sweet Potato, yellow potatoes, and spinach.
- Tomatoes – Diced (fire-roasted) tomatoes and tomato paste, along with broth, add incredible flavor to the soup.
- Beans – One can of white beans, like cannelloni or Great Northern.
- Optional Ingredients – A parmesan rind and two bay leaves add a lot of flavor but could be skipped if you don’t have them.
- Pesto – I used my homemade pesto, but store-bought is fine too.
- Pasta – Just over a cup of small pasta noodles is all you need. I used orecchiette, but orzo or ditalini would work too.
I’ve recently started adding some chicken sausage to this soup and it adds incredible flavor if you want to add extra protein!
How to make the best Minestrone Soup:
Step 1
Prep veggies. Dice the veggies. You’ll especially want the potatoes to be small in size so it cooks faster!
Step 2
Sauté veggies. In a medium to large stock pot, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add all the veggies (except the spinach) to the pot – the onion, carrots, celery, garlic, cabbage mix, sweet potatoes, and yellow potatoes. Add seasonings – salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, and onion powder – and stir. Cook for 7-8 minutes, or until veggies become fragrant and start to soften.
Step 3
Add broth ingredients. Then add the diced tomatoes, tomato paste, chicken broth, white beans, parmesan rind, and bay leaves. Bring to a bubbling simmer, and cook until the potatoes are fork tender, approximately 20-30 minutes. You may want to add additional salt and pepper here as well.
Step 4
Add pesto and pasta. When potatoes are just tender, add the pesto sauce and the pasta, and continue to cook until the pasta is al dente.
NOTE: We keep our Homemade Basil Pesto Sauce in the freezer in small containers. It freezes exceptionally well and works in so many recipes.
Step 5
Remove from heat. Remove the pot from heat, and remove the parmesan rind and the bay leaves. Add the spinach and stir until wilted.
Step 6
Serve. To serve, add some freshly grated parmesan cheese to individual bowls of soup, along with an extra dollop of pesto sauce (if desired). Enjoy with some crusty bread!
Always taste your soup at the end to determine if more seasoning is needed!
Since I love to bake bread, I keep a stash of it in the freezer to go with soup recipes like this one. We love our Chewy French Bread, Italian Herb Bread, or Multigrain Bread. Give one of these a try!
Recipe FAQs:
A parmesan rind is the rind (the end part) of some authentic parmesan cheese. These have tons of parmesan flavor but are hard to actually eat because they are hard. So think twice next time you go to toss one in the trash. Save it! Use it in all your Italian soup recipes!
You can easily modify the veggies in this recipe. Don’t like sweet potatoes? Add extra yellow potatoes instead. Not a fan of spinach? Leave it out! Missing celery? Leave that out too, and add some extra carrots instead. Make it YOUR soup!
LOL. I know how you feel. This soup will cook faster if you DICE the potatoes. They are always the last thing to get done, so don’t just haphazardly chop. DICE them.
Glad you asked! 😀 The soup will require more broth as it cooks. The ingredients start to soak up the broth as it cooks which is a VERY tasty thing. So just keep adding broth as needed, and make sure you keep extra on hand for leftovers.
Interested in other Italian Soups? Try our Italian Chicken Tortellini Soup or Turkey Meatball Italian Wedding Soup.
Other Meatless Soups:
You won’t even miss the meat in these recipes. But if so inclined, you can always add some flatbread pizza with meat or toppings of your choice!
- Split Pea Vegetable Soup – A healthy soup loaded with protein and fiber.
- Carrot Ginger Soup – Roasting the carrots creates the BEST flavor.
- French Onion Soup without Wine – You can’t beat the flavor in this soup.
- Autumn Squash Soup – A Panera copycat you should try today!
Kitchen Tools used for this recipe: (Affiliate Links)
xoxo ~Sue
Italian Minestrone Soup Recipe
Ingredients
For the sauteed veggies:
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- 1 medium onion – diced
- 3 cloves garlic – minced
- 3 large carrots – diced
- 2 medium celery stalks – diced
- 2 cups cabbage slaw mix – bagged version
- 1 medium sweet potato – peeled and diced
- 4 small yellow potatoes – diced
- kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper – to taste (season in layers)
- 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
For the broth and additional ingredients:
- 30 oz. fire-roasted diced tomatoes
- 4 Tablespoons tomato paste
- 8-10 cups lower-sodium chicken broth – You will need extra broth for leftovers.
- 15 oz. white beans – cannellini or other white bean, rinsed and drained
- 1 parmesan rind – optional
- 2 bay leaves – optional
- 1/2 cup basil pesto sauce – store-bought or homemade
- 1 1/4 cup orecchiette pasta – or other small pasta, such as ditalini, orzo, or small elbow
- 3 cups baby spinach leaves
- freshly grated parmesan cheese and extra basil pesto sauce – for serving
Instructions
Saute the veggies:
- In a medium to large stock pot, add olive oil over medium-high heat. Add onion, carrots, celery, cabbage mix, sweet potatoes, and yellow potatoes. Stir and then add the seasonings – salt and pepper to taste, Italian Seasoning, and onion powder.
- Cook for approximately 7-8 minutes, or until veggies begin to soften. Add garlic and stir for a minute.
Add broth ingredients:
- Next add the diced tomatoes, tomato paste, 6 cups of chicken broth (add more as needed), white beans, the parmesan rind, and the bay leaves. Bring to a bubbling simmer, and continue to cook for 20-30 minutes, or until potatoes are just fork tender or slightly before.
- Then add the pesto sauce and the pasta, and cook until pasta is al dente.
- Remove from heat, and add spinach. Stir until wilted. Remove the parmesan rind and the bay leaves.
- Serve the soup with some freshly grated parmesan cheese, extra pesto sauce, and some crusty bread.
Video
Notes
- Don’t be scared of the long ingredient list. It’s mostly just veggies!
- Make sure you DICE the potatoes so they don’t take too long to cook in the soup.
- You will most likely need at least 8 cups of broth, as leftovers usually require a touch more.
Excellent comfort food choice – and relatively easy to make. Great with some fresh made French bread!
Amen!
As my sister Jackie said our sister SueBee has been trying to get us to try this one. There are just sooooo many good recipes on this blog but I FINALLY made it. Three words, flavor, flavor, flavor. I love all the veggies and tomato broth base. I will make this one often.
I’m so happy to hear this, Shari!
Okay, I’m embarrassed to say that I hadn’t tried this soup before, even though Sue tried to convince us (her family) that we’d like it. Sorry Sue! A cousin of ours told me how good it is when I was looking for heart healthy recommendations. Thank you Carol! You can use as much or as little salt as you want and so on… Easy to adjust this recipe to your needs. It’s delicious! Please try it because you won’t regret it. Sue, you were right, and I’ll listen better next time.
Ha! So happy you FINALLY tried it and it was a success! Thanks Jackie!
Excellent recipe! The only change I made was that I substituted zucchini for the carrots since I didn’t have any carrots. Will definitely be making it again. Thanks so much!
Hi Sue , thank you for sharing your Mom’s recipes . I am going to try making the bread and the soup , I will let you know how did it go. Xoxo
Please let me know how everything turns out, Walda! Enjoy!
Win/Win. Tastes incredible and I eat my veggies!
Ton of healthy veggies in this soup!