Minestrone Soup in 60 minutes
There’s nothing quite like a good warm bowl of minestrone soup. The variety of components ticks so many boxes, providing you with a spread of nutrients in every spoonful, and it’s easily adaptable for most dietary requirements. Despite having many elements in the dish, the recipe itself need not be a complex one. With this simple recipe, you should have a nice steaming pot of minestrone soup ready in around one hour.
You’re going to start by gathering one large onion, a couple of carrots and two sticks of celery or leeks. Cut each vegetable into small cubes or slices (around 1 cm) and set aside. Over a medium flame, add one tablespoon of olive oil to your pot. Add your chopped vegetables, sprinkle some salt and pepper, and stir for around 10 minutes until they begin to soften.
In the meantime, prepare around 1.2 – 1.5 liters of chicken or vegetable stock, and set it aside. Finely dice a few cloves of garlic and add this to the pot. Stir for a few more minutes, before adding two tablespoons of tomato paste. Continue stirring for a few more minutes, until it starts becoming quite fragrant. Add a can of chopped tomatoes, and your prepared stock, and wait for it to come to a boil.
Turn the heat down, and let simmer for 15 minutes. Next, you need to add a can of (drained) cannellini beans, and around 3.5 oz of spaghetti. You can replace the cannellini beans with kidney beans, or even chickpeas if you prefer, and the spaghetti can be swapped for a different shaped pasta if you wish. Once it comes to a boil again, leave to simmer for a further ten minutes. While you wait, roughly slice around ¼ of a head of cabbage. Then add this to the pot, and boil for a further two minutes, and then you’re ready to serve and dig in!