Classic Minestrone Soup
Warm up with this vegetarian minestrone soup! This classic minestrone soup recipe is healthy, easy to make, and tastes incredible. It's vegan, too, if you don't top it with cheese.
Updated by Kathryne Taylor on August 29, 2024
Finally! It’s about time this blog offered a traditional minestrone soup recipe. Minestrone is a hearty Italian vegetable soup made with tomato-y broth and pasta or rice. I’ve been working hard on this recipe and I’m so excited to share it with you.
Minestrone was traditionally made to use up leftover vegetables, so feel free to use any seasonal vegetables and greens you have on hand. I used potatoes and spinach for the soup you see here, and it was absolutely delicious.
I listed some alternatives in the recipe, including yellow squash, zucchini, butternut squash, green beans or peas. That means that you can make seasonal minestrone on cool days from fall through spring!
I used canned beans here instead of cooking my own, which cuts the cooking time down to a reasonable weeknight level. The remaining ingredients are basic pantry items, including canned tomatoes, pasta, basic spices and onions.
Why is this the best minestrone soup?
- This hearty minestrone is easy to make and totally worth the effort.
- The recipe calls for seasonal vegetables and affordable pantry ingredients.
- The soup packs great for lunch, and tastes even better the next day.
- It freezes and defrosts well, too.
- This homemade minestrone is infinitely better than the Olive Garden or store-bought varieties!
I adapted this recipe from the lentil minestrone in my cookbook, which was based on my lentil soup. For this classic minestrone, I omitted the lentils, added white beans, upped the tomato paste, and reserved the final tablespoon of olive oil to mix in at the end.
Please let me know how you like this soup in the comments! I always love reading your feedback and I’m eager to hear which veggies you use in your soup.
If you’re looking for more soup recipes, definitely check out the two mentioned above, and I have even more soups here.
Watch how to make Minestrone Soup
Classic Minestrone Soup
Warm up with this vegetarian minestrone soup! This classic minestrone soup recipe is healthy, easy to make, and tastes incredible. It’s vegan, too, if you don’t top it with cheese. Recipe yields 6 bowls or 8 cups of soup.
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
- 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
- 2 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
- 2 medium ribs celery, chopped
- ¼ cup tomato paste
- 2 cups chopped seasonal vegetables (potatoes, yellow squash, zucchini, butternut squash, green beans or peas all work)
- 4 cloves garlic, pressed or minced
- ½ teaspoon dried oregano
- ½ teaspoon dried thyme
- 1 large can (28 ounces) diced tomatoes, with their liquid (or 2 small 15-ounce cans)
- 4 cups (32 ounces) vegetable broth
- 2 cups water
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 2 bay leaves
- Pinch of red pepper flakes
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 1 cup whole grain orecchiette, elbow or small shell pasta
- 1 can (15 ounces) Great Northern beans or cannellini beans, rinsed and drained, or 1 ½ cups cooked beans
- 2 cups baby spinach, chopped kale or chopped collard greens
- 2 teaspoons lemon juice
- Freshly grated Parmesan cheese, for garnishing (optional)
Instructions
- Warm 3 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large Dutch oven or stockpot over medium heat. Once the oil is shimmering, add the chopped onion, carrot, celery, tomato paste and a pinch of salt. Cook, stirring often, until the vegetables have softened and the onions are turning translucent, about 7 to 10 minutes.
- Add the seasonal vegetables, garlic, oregano and thyme. Cook until fragrant while stirring frequently, about 2 minutes.
- Pour in the diced tomatoes and their juices, broth and water. Add the salt, bay leaves and red pepper flakes. Season generously with freshly ground black pepper.
- Raise heat to medium-high and bring the mixture to a boil, then partially cover the pot with the lid, leaving about a 1” gap for steam to escape. Reduce heat as necessary to maintain a gentle simmer.
- Cook for 15 minutes, then remove the lid and add the pasta, beans and greens. Continue simmering, uncovered, for 20 minutes or until the the pasta is cooked al dente and the greens are tender.
- Remove the pot from the heat, then remove the bay leaves. Stir in the lemon juice and remaining tablespoon of olive oil. Taste and season with more salt (I usually add about ¼ teaspoon more) and pepper until the flavors really sing. Garnish bowls of soup with grated Parmesan, if you’d like.
Notes
Make it dairy free/vegan: Don’t garnish with Parmesan, or use homemade vegan Parmesan.
Make it gluten free: Substitute your favorite sturdy gluten-free noodle. I used DeLallo’s Whole-Grain Rice Shells and they worked great.
Parmesan note: Most Parmesans are not technically vegetarian (they contain animal rennet), but Whole Foods 365 and BelGioioso brands offer vegetarian Parmesan cheese.
Nutrition
The information shown is an estimate provided by an online nutrition calculator. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice. See our full nutrition disclosure here.
This is the best minestrone soup recipe! I have been making this probably once a week or so. I’m making it right now to have for dinner on a cold, snowy day in the Northeast. It’s great to have on hand for a healthy lunch too. It tastes even better the next day. Thank you for a delightful, bright, well balanced soup recipe. Love it!
Would this fit in a 2-quart pot? Or should I half the recipe?
This makes a lot of soup. You would want to decrease the recipe.
Great recipe! Sure a fair amount of chopping but well worth it. My Lord, this makes a bucket of Minestrone! We just pulled it off the stove, added the lemon and are about to taste it for the first time….it looks absolutely delicious, healthy and amazing! ….. it’s delicious!
I added some asparagus and some cabbage….a very tasty and filling meal!
Enough for 2 day!
I usually don’t comment on recipes I’ve tried, good or bad but I had to with this one. I am a big fan of Olive Gardens Minestrone soup, it’s my standard go to. This soup was a little time consuming to make but worth every minute, it is so much better then Olive Gardens and I don’t have to leave the house. Recipe is printed and I plan on making many more pot of this delicious soup.
I’m happy you thought it was worth it, Jan!
I’m looking forward to making this soup! Does anyone have ideas for if/how to translate the recipe to slow cooker or instapot?
Wonderful recipe! My family loves it.
Wonderful, Cassandra! I appreciate your review.
Love this recipe. Delicious! Have made it twice now.
LITERALLY THE BEST SOUP IVE EVER HAD
Hooray! I’m glad you loved it, Kat.
It is January and cold and time of year for a soup that seems to be wonderful at any time of year. Making this again for the second time. The first time, the soup was a big hit. My friend of Italian heritage said it was as good as his Grandmother’s version and she was just off the boat from Southern Italy. High praise indeed. The wife and daughter all went back for seconds. Added benefit, the house was filled of the aroma of the aromatics and the tomato sauce. BRAVO!!!! This recipe goes into the favorite pile. Thanks for sharing.
You’re welcome, Rich!
Made it today, for the 2nd time. It’s as delicious this time as it was the first. Thank you!
Just made this with butternut squash I found at the farmer’s market and kale. So delicious!! I didn’t even put in parmesan and it was still amazing. I love that it’s so healthy! Would definitely make this again but trying other combinations of veggies for fun.
Can you use frozen greens?
You could try it, but you may want to squeeze out excess moisture. Let me know what you think if you try it.
Maybe I missed seeing but the proportions you used in this recipe yields how many servings of soup?
Hi Sandy! The serving information is in the recipe card. One serving is roughly 1.5-2 cups.
Followed the spirit of this receipt and made a great minestrone soup. Everyone loved it. I intended making around 3 liters, ended up with more that 5! Had to use an additional pot to keep it together.
Hi Kate,
We absolutely love this minestrone! We used garbanzos instead of white beans, and for the pasta, we used leftover pieces of lasagna noodles. So good on a rainy day! Thank you so much!
-Tim and Vicki
PS. We’ve made most of the recipes in your book and our family loved them all!
I love to hear that, Tim! Thank you for your review.
This is a delicious recipe. I have made this for 6-8 servings and I was looking for a vegetarian recipe for a crowd and this is it! Multiply this recipe by 10 and you have 60 servings. I made this for dinner at our local homeless shelter. When making it for dinner in my house, I added 2.5cups of water and added the pasta raw. No problems absorbing liquid. When making for a crowd, I cooked the pasta separately and added later.
The best minestrone soup ever! Thank you so much!
You’re welcome, Betty!
Really good! I have used many of your recipes over the years and have never been disappointed. You are my go to site when looking for a recipe a they are all healthy, simple and good. Looking forward to another bowl of the soup today. It was a good way to use up some kale I had blanched and frozen. Hubby does not like kale but it was fine in the soup. Glad to have found your site as I do not like to cook so simple recipe are best.
This soup is amazing!! I made it just as written and it was perfect! The second time I made it I was a bit over zealous with the vegetables and it was not as good as the first time. The third time I made it I measured the veggies and it was so good! My kids love this soup! I never have leftover which is disappointing, but now I will make it for lunch.
Hi,
I really like this recipe. I have made it twice already.
I am vegan but sometimes just am not interested in cooking, so being able to freeze some of this without the beans and pasta really works for.me.
My only issue, and it’s an ongoing one for me since I love to eat clean. I am usually on a no gluten and dairy low fodmap diet, so even though I love garlic and onions, I never eat them.
I treat them like an exotic dessert, and till I find a solution that works for my cooking style and budget it’s okay.
*
I substituted asparagus for green beans, and I used Vidalia onion instead of a yellow or white one.
Thanks,
Rebecca
I’m happy to hear you were able to enjoy it!
Delicious! Pretty easy to make too.
Happy to hear you loved it, Delores!
Do you have suggestions on how to make this in a crockpot?
Thanks,
Connie
I don’t, sorry! I would recommend not adding the noodles until later so they wouldn’t get over done.
Another hit, Kate! Thank you! I didn’t have too many veggies kicking around in the old fridge and we’re attempting to do “no spend February” right now, so I only used potatoes and a can of green beans for the seasonal veg but it was still so so so good!! I went ahead and added the pasta into the whole soup, figured you’ve been at this awhile that I’m pretty sure you know your stuff and it worked out just fine, didn’t absorb all the liquid at all! Delicious and once again it’ll serve as my lunches all week, yaaay!
Perfect. Fast. And delicious. I added more beans and kale and that made it heartier and very filling.
Wow, my husband is not a soup lover but he enjoyed this soup. A couple differences I used were can of crushed tomatoes and can of fire roasted diced tomatoes (this is what I had on hand) and left out the red pepper. It was so delicious and easy to make. Thank you!
This was super delicious! The flavors melted perfectly together, best minestrone!
I was looking for a good minestrone soup recipe, sometimes you just want minestrone soup. This had great reviews so I thought it would be a pretty good soup, probably a little bland, but pretty good so I made it. Well was I surprised!!!! Your followers aren’t wrong, this was a great minestrone soup!
Thank you!!!
What a great tasting soup! Thank you, the ingredients are perfect. I’m lazy and like doing the pasta with the soup, so I added 2 cups of water after reading comments. Just depends how chunky you like it. Appreciate another great recipe to replace the old one. Love your food!
Thank you, Nancy!
I made this recipe last night, pretty much by the directions, with the exception of the spinach which I didn’t have at the time, so I put about the same amount of chopped arugula in instead. It was so good! The vegetables were nice and crisp and the broth was delicious with just the right amount of flavoring. Definitely a keeper! Thanks!
Great to her, Mark! Thank you for your review.
Hello from Riyadh
This recipe has become a staple in our household, having made several times, and it remains in high demand.
The only variation to the recipe is that I add pieces of parmesan rind to the mixture when I add the broth, and discard it before adding the lemon juice.
That’s great to hear, Ibrahim!
I make a big pan of this soup every week, and it’s my go to midweek lunch. Filling and tasty! Plus it’s a great way of getting many different plants into my diet.
Delicious, great instructions! Very tasty and plenty to go around.
Minestrone soup isn’t in my top 3 favorite soups. But THIS recipe was amazing! I enjoyed it so much!!
Great to hear, Angela! I appreciate your review.
I have made this soup twice now, and we love it! I didn’t make any changes. It takes a little bit, so I set everything out in order, and then do my veggie prep. Once done with prep, I then begin. If there any leftovers, I bag and freeze. Great recipe!
That’s great to hear, Trish! I appreciate your review.
I’ve made this several times. I know with a C and K recipe it will be great the first time. I’ve gone up on the apices to make it more flavorful. I’ve changed out different veggies, I’ve eliminated the 2 cups of water at times to make a stew. Always perfect.
Great to hear, Gail! Thank you for your review.
Has anyone tried leaving the pasta out and adding another can of beans?
We’ve probably make this dish 30 or 40 times over the years. We add tiny wedding soup meatballs to it. Had to reprint the recipe today because the original is so stained!
Wonderful recipe!! It’s recipes like this that have helped us transition to a plant based diet. Vegan, with no compromise on taste. Thank you!
You’re welcome, Teresa!
This is the 2nd time making this soup. It’s so delicious! Everyone liked it. Will keep in my rotation!
Great to hear, Theresa! I appreciate your review.
Apologies if you have answered this somewhere else and I missed it — do you have a receipt for homemade vegetable broth? If not, what brands of store bought do you particularly like? Thank you!
I did make this recipe and my family loved it!
I don’t have a recipe, sorry! I do find brands can vary and try to buy organic when I can.
I love that I found your site and you are a fellow KC resident. First recipe I tried Minestrone soup…. Delicious!
Great to hear, Alissa! I appreciate your review.
I made this recipe yesterday almost exactly as stated here. My only change was that I cooked pasta al dente separately and then added it to the soup based on some reviewer’s suggestion. Other than that, no changes…Not only did it taste delicious, it was extremely satisfying! It transported me to some small Mom & Pop Italian restaurant. The soup was hearty and filling. Every bite made you come back for more. Highly recommend trying this out! It’s a game changer. You will never settle for anything less after this experience.
Thank you, Prajakta!
Delicious!!! Thank you so much❤️
This is my all time favorite.
Wonderful to hear, Liz! I appreciate your review.