Minestrone soup

[snowwhite]

Any tried and trusted recipes?

[mei]

ha! I just made some tonight. yumm.

I looked at a few recipes, but they're all pretty different (in amount of ingredients, etc), so I kind of just put a lot of veggies together, tomato cubes, veggie stock and some macaroni.

[Phar Lap]

The best Minestrone recipe I found was in an Italian cookbook.

Ingredients:
2 onions
3 carrots
3 stalks celery
250g potatoes
2 zucchini
90g green beans
250g cabbage
1/2 cup oil
45g butter
1 1/4 litres water
3 beef stock cubes
2 x 400g cans peeled, whole tomatoes
310g can cannellini beans
salt, pepper

Method:
1. Peel and finely chop onions, peel and chop carrots, string and chop celery, peel and dice potatoes, dice zucchini, top and tail beans and chop into small pieces, shred cabbage.

2. Heat oil and butter in large pan, add onions, cook over medium heat until onions are pale golden brown. Add carrots, cook 2 to 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Repeat this procedure with the potatoes, then the celery, zucchini, beans and cabbage.
Stir in water, crumbled stock cubes and undrained, mashed tomatoes. Bring to boil, reduce heat, cover, simmer 1 1/2 to 2 hours or until soup is thick.

3. During last 15 minutes of cooking, stir in cannellini beans. Season with salt and pepper. If desired, grated parmesan cheese can be stirred into the soup before serving or served separately with the soup.
Serves 4 to 6

Note: This is a thick, hearty soup and very filling and makes a great meal.