Connie's Minestrone Soup
A hearty soup for cold winter days. Serve with warm bread and butter and a tasty salad.
A hearty soup for cold winter days. Serve with warm bread and butter and a tasty salad.
- salt & pepper to taste
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 2 tbsp butter
- 3 cloves garlic chopped
- 2 med onions chopped
- 6 stalks celery chopped
- 6 carrots (up to 9), chopped
- 1 can tomato or v8 juice + 1 can water (large tomato jui
- 5 cans beans drained (your choice) i use black, pinto, northern, kidney, whatever you prefer, and add as many as
- 2 potatoes (up to 5), chopped
- 1/3 small pasta
- 1 tbsp chili powder (up to 2)
- 1 dash cayenne
- Carbohydrate 17.837304875 g
- Cholesterol 6.106 mg
- Fat 5.372526875 g
- Fiber 4.50046007242203 g
- Protein 2.652381125 g
- Saturated Fat 1.90629245 g
- Serving Size 1 1 Serving (173g)
- Sodium 73.871975 mg
- Sugar 13.336844802578 g
- Trans Fat 0.320015825 g
- Calories 123 calories
Step-by-step
- Sauté onions, garlic, celery and carrots until soft and golden.
- Pour in tomato juice and water.
- Add beans.
- Add potatoes & pasta.
- Add spices and let simmer to blend flavors.
- If you prefer a soup with meat, brown 1 – 1½ lbs. ground beef (remove from pan and add back in), before sautéing vegetables.
Should the root vegetables sweat completely through their cell walls before the liquid goes into the pot, or will partial softening suffice for this volume of soup? Cooking onions, garlic, celery, and carrots in a combination of olive oil and butter achieves more than simple softening; the fat-soluble aromatic compounds in the alliums and the moisture within the celery and carrots undergo a Maillard reaction and steam-softening simultaneously. When butter solids brown gently alongside the olive oil, they contribute nutty lactones that complexly coat the palate alongside the sharp sulfur compounds of the garlic.
- Dice the two medium onions, six stalks of celery, and six to nine carrots to uniform dimensions of approximately one-quarter inch so they release starches and sugars at an identical rate.
- Sauté the aromatic vegetables over medium-low heat for roughly twelve to fifteen minutes until the onions turn translucent and the edges of the carrots soften, ensuring the raw edge disappears before the tomato juice is added.
- Stir in one-third cup of small pasta and two to five chopped potatoes simultaneously, monitoring the pot closely because starch from both ingredients will thicken the liquid as it reduces.
- Maintain a gentle simmer for at least thirty minutes once the liquids and canned beans are incorporated, allowing the starches to gelatinize properly without breaking down the pasta into mush.
- Substitute canned tomato or V8 juice with fresh puréed tomatoes if desired, keeping in mind that fresh fruit requires additional salt and a slightly longer reduction time to match the savory concentration of preserved juice.
Combining canned beans with fresh root vegetables bridges pantry staples and produce-drawer items into a cohesive pot of food. Controlling the heat below a rolling boil prevents the delicate pasta shapes from disintegrating while the starches hydrate completely.
