How To Make Classic Minestrone Soup

Chilly winter nights call for steaming bowls of soup. Vegetable varieties not only offer respite from the cold, but they also serve as a break from the season’s abundance of heavy, creamy casseroles. This classic minestrone boasts hearty vegetables in a tomato-herb broth, finished with a swirl of bright green pesto. Serve with crusty chunks of bread and shavings of Parmesan cheese for a cozy winter dinner.

Like its cousins ribolita and pasta e fagioli, minestrone soup is a brothy Italian vegetable soup. According to Marcella Hazan in her cookbook Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, there isn’t a hard-and-fast rule on which vegetables must be present to make it minestrone — different regions of Italy use different vegetables, and the soups change with the season.

Essentially, minestrone is a thick, hearty variety of vegetable soup, thanks to the addition of beans and sometimes pasta or rice. Tomatoes, carrots, onion, and celery are usually included, with other vegetables added at the cook’s discretion. This minestrone recipe embraces the variety of vegetables available year-round, so it’s just the thing to make whether you’re shoveling out from a snowstorm mid-January or escaping a blustery and rainy day at the end of March.

The minestrone soup I’ve been serving for years began as Ina Garten’s Winter Minestrone soup, but since I can’t help but tinker with a recipe, it has since morphed into my own. I often skip the pancetta, and substitute whatever melange of vegetables I have in the crisper drawer. But there are two components of Ina’s recipe that I never skip: flavoring the broth with a generous scoop of pesto and serving the thickened soup with crusty bread.

1. Cook vegetables in stages. The key to a soup that actually has texture (and isn’t just a broth filled with mushy vegetables) is to add the vegetables in stages. Begin with a mirepoix — the classic trio of onion, celery, and carrot — which boosts the flavor of the store-bought broth. Next, add long-cooking, dense vegetables, like sweet potatoes or winter squash. Finally, stir in tender vegetables, like zucchini and garlic (which is prone to burning). You’ll cook each round until the vegetables brighten in color and just begin to soften, about 3 minutes.
2. Add flavor at every step. Sautéing the vegetables in both olive oil and butter adds richness and body to the soup from the get-go. Adding in a Parmesan rind gives the broth a big boost, as does store-bought pesto. Pesto is packed with concentrated flavor, thanks to chopped herbs, nuts, and cheese. It also gives the soup a rich consistency.
3. Leave out the pasta (or serve it on the side): Many minestrone recipes are made with short pasta, but here, we opt for creamy cannellini beans. Pasta can absorb a lot of the broth, especially if you’re storing leftovers or freezing the soup, making it mushy. But if you insist on noodles in your soup, cook short noodles (I recommend ditalini or macaroni) separately and stir them into the soup upon serving.

This soup will thicken in the refrigerator as the residual heat of the broth continues to cook the vegetables and they release their starches, so stir in another splash of broth when you reheat leftovers.

If you’re meal prepping this soup or making it ahead of time, cool the soup, then pack into deli containers or ladle into freezer-safe zip-top bags. Lay the bags flat on a baking sheet and freeze. Once solid, they can be stored vertically in the freezer where they take up less space and are easy to thaw.

At Kitchn, we know how important it is to find recipes that are worth your time. That’s why every tutorial — like this one — features recipes that have been tried and tested by our team of developers and at-home cooks from across the country. Questions or feedback for us? Say hello: recipes@thekitchn.com.