11 Tips You Need For The Best Homemade Minestrone Soup

Minestrone, a hearty and wholesome Italian soup, is made with some of the most simple and basic ingredients known to humanity. Yet the result is somehow a masterpiece, illustrating that when made properly, food can be much more than the sum of its parts. Not only that, but minestrone can be incredibly versatile. While a typical recipe might include potatoes, carrots, and celery, you can still make a perfectly good minestrone by substituting those ingredients with barley, fennel, and leeks. Equally, don't be afraid to add leafy vegetables or spicy items. If it looks like minestrone and tastes like minestrone, it's minestrone — carrots or not.

And precisely because minestrone is so adaptable and adjustable to seasonal availability, it can be served at any time of the year. (In truth, fall or winter is where it truly shines.) Its broth, rich in flavor and depth, is peerless when it comes to warming you up when it's cold outside, and there's always something comforting about the idea of being able to include all your favorite ingredients in a dish. A basic minestrone involves sauteing onions, carrots, and celery in olive oil, followed by the addition of broth, tomatoes, beans, and rice. But there are a number of other ways to make your minestrone even better.

One of the great things about minestrone is that it's healthy and filling all at once. That's because many recipes include pasta, which helps satiate your tummy as it absorbs all those good nutrients from the vegetables. And you can add as much pasta as you like –- as long as it's not so much that it absorbs all the water and takes over the soup.

Another element to remember is that the pasta of your choice should be small in shape. No long and curvy spaghetti or tagliatelle. Slurping these straight out of soup would be decidedly messy and might even lead to burns as the hot liquid goes flying everywhere. Instead, stick with ditalini or farfalle. If you're making this for small children, you could also opt for any type of pastina, a broad category of pasta that comes in super small shapes. 

The timing of your pasta addition also matters. The simplest and most logical process may seem to just cook the pasta directly in the minestrone water until done; this idea goes haywire once you remember that pasta tends to soak up water, essentially continuing to cook in the juices until it's in your mouth. Several hours –- or, in the case of leftovers, days -– might have passed during this period, leaving you with a mushy or gooey pasta consistency. To avoid this unpleasant outcome, simply cook your pasta separately and add it to your minestrone just before you eat it.

Canned tomatoes are an essential ingredient in any minestrone recipe, but the choice of canned tomatoes, the amount to include, and the moment when you add them are all important factors to consider as you work your way through your recipe. First of all, to maximize the effects of the tomatoes, it helps to add two types: Use both crushed and diced canned tomatoes in your minestrone. This allows you to enjoy the textural benefits of the diced tomatoes while also infusing the whole soup with their flavor via the crushed tomatoes. The crushed tomatoes will cook down and seep into every nook and cranny of the soup; the diced tomatoes will retain their texture and give you something to bite into. Just make sure you select a good quality brand that won't fall apart in the pot.

But don't forget that even those diced tomatoes will eventually turn to mush if cooked for too long, which is why we recommend that you add tomatoes to your soup towards the end of the recipe –- about 20 minutes before you're ready to take the minestrone off the heat. Not only will your tomatoes come out with a fresher flavor and firmer texture, but the acidity contained within them won't halt the cooking process, which could lead some of your vegetables or pulses to turn out undercooked, as the high pH levels in tomatoes can keep them from breaking down and softening.

The versatility of minestrone means that it can accommodate a wide range of ingredients in an even wider range of proportions. But what we aim to do with each and every meal we make is go beyond what is simply accommodating and reaching instead for the excellent. This is what you'd be doing if you added a splash of V8 juice to your minestrone. This is not just a fun little thing to do to use up some expiring juice. It will actually improve the flavor of your minestrone soup.

To deploy V8 to its maximum effect, mix V8 juice and water, or chicken broth, in equal parts and add this combination to your recipe at the point where it calls for the inclusion of the broth. If you're worried about the V8 dialing up the acidity too much, simply adjust the recipe to include fewer canned tomatoes. You can also get creative with your selection of V8 varieties and go for a hot and spicy version. Meanwhile, a low-sodium version might be just what you need to keep the flavor strong and the blood pressure low.

Small-sized pasta and diced potatoes are the most common types of starches to include in a hearty minestrone, though you don't have to limit yourself to what everyone else is doing. In fact, there's a whole other world of grains out there that work exceedingly well with minestrone, some of which are more nutritious than others. We suggest considering adding quinoa as a way to fill out your soup and increase your intake of key nutrients such as protein, folate, and fiber — and to make your soup gluten-free.

Indeed, this may be one reason why Giada De Laurentiis uses this grain in her minestrone. Another reason may be that you can easily swap in quinoa for any other starchy ingredient, no matter which recipe you're following. And adopting any of Giada's recipes in this department won't lead you astray. In fact, another excellent minestrone tip that De Laurentiis recommends is to use chicken broth if you're including potatoes or quinoa and beef broth when adding pancetta. This is because the chicken broth lends itself well to absorption by whichever starch you choose, while the pancetta's strong, fatty flavor can be complemented by a liquid that is just as strong in flavor, such as beef broth.

Minestrone tends to come in a deep brown, sometimes reddish color due to the mixture of various vegetables and a strong tomato presence. But since minestrone can include pretty much any type of vegetable and still fit neatly into this category, there's no reason why you shouldn't experiment with turning it green every once in a while. Kermit the frog famously said "it's not easy being green," but we beg to differ.

One of our favorite green minestrone soup recipes comes from the brilliant mind of British chef Nigella Lawson, whose version goes heavy on the green vegetables, including when it comes to the pasta, which in this case is ricotta and spinach-filled tortelloni. Prepare this dish by sauteing the thyme before adding frozen peas, leeks, diced potatoes, celery, zucchini, and green beans. Cover these with water and cook until everything is tender. Once even the potatoes have cooked through, remove some of the vegetables along with some water, zap them in a blender with some basil and Parmesan, and pour the creamy mixture back into your pot with along with some beans and tortelloni. In the spirit of minestrone, you can make this flavorful and visually appealing version of the soup with any green vegetables that come to mind.