Italian Minestrone soup

The history of one of the favorite Italian dishes - minestrone soup - goes back centuries. The first mentions are found in the chronicles of the 16th century of our era. Among the ingredients are beans - beans, lentils, chickpeas, peas, onions, herbs and lard. The simplicity of the components of the dish gives reason to imagine that it was included in the menu of the poor population. One of its titles, or rather not even titles, but the category to which it was classified, is called cucina povera in Italian, translated as “poor cuisine.”

What is Minestrone Soup?

It is impossible to comprehensively answer this question without getting acquainted with its history.

The set of goods for making soup did not have a constant composition. It could change depending on the crops growing in different areas, the time of year, the harvest, and simply on the preferences of the population of different parts of Italy. Obviously, the composition included herbs to add flavor. Usually, food was not bought; those that grew in the garden and what was left over from the previous meal were used. Therefore, it is completely fair to call it seasonal.

The food was often vegetable, but if you happened to get hold of the bones of some edible living creature, it was cooked in almost meat broth. The opportunity to season the dish with lard was not missed either.

As cultures interpenetrated, hitherto unknown new items appeared in the recipe. Thus, in the 17th and 18th centuries, potatoes and tomatoes, which spread and became available in Italy, were mastered here by local housewives and brought into the pan. Naturally, the folk soup was also replenished with them.

In lean years, another Italian ingredient had to be added to the pan - pasta. The experience was so successful that they are still included in what is considered a traditional soup recipe. Over time, the list of ingredients underwent changes (or our information about them changed), but the principles of cooking from what was in the house and in the garden, using everything that was left over from the last day, remained constant. As a truly folk dish, real Minestrone, one makes up a family dinner because, despite the various ingredients, it should be thick and satisfying.

What is Minestrone now?

Nowadays, the ancient dish is included in the menu of various restaurants representing Italian cuisine. They are not abused by housewives. And each chef has his own, immediately unique, traditional recipe for Italian vegetable minestrone.

Over time, the composition has become legendary. From somewhere came the rule of 7 - they say, a traditional recipe should include 7 different vegetables, 7 types of meat and 7 herbs. The creator of this statement was apparently inspired by the similarity of the name with the word “minister”. They say that a real ministerial soup should be complex and unique.

Government member and dish have a similar sound but completely different origins. One comes from the Latin word minister, which means “servant.” 2nd – from the Italian minestra – “soup”. The ending one means “big”. Minestrone soup translates as big soup or soup.

In the busy life of a farmer, it was an unaffordable luxury to cook for one meal. To prepare food, they used a huge saucepan and cooked it for the whole family for a number of days.

What about rule 7 in a traditional minestrone recipe? Well, think about it for yourself - there are 7 types of meat in a poor farmer's farm. Nonsense.

But there must be something constant in such a different composition. Yes, these are the principles of its manufacture. The products included in it are cut very finely, almost a little larger in size than a pea. First they are sautéed in olive oil. And in order for the products to be well saturated with oil, they are cut very finely. In addition, finely chopped ones cook faster.

Minestrone soup recipes

Now, after more or less complete awareness, you can move on to its manufacture.

Traditional minestrone recipe

One huge onion;
One huge carrot;
One sweet (bell) pepper;
One young zucchini;
Two large potatoes;
One large tomato;
Green peas – 1/3 cup;
A couple of cloves of garlic;
A couple of celery stalks;
Some kind of curly pasta – I’ll love it;
Water 1-1.5 liters;
Salt, black and aromatic ground pepper, olive oil for frying - to taste;
Parmesan cheese - slice.

Did you see that, apart from water, everything is indicated in pieces, circles and other units not included in the international SI system? Where have you ever seen a housewife measure something in the kitchen with something else?

All is ready? Cleared? Washed? Let's get started.

To begin, cut the onions, carrots, peppers (don’t forget to remove the seeds), zucchini, and potatoes into small cubes or slices. How small? Look at the polka dots and your own pinky nail. Here, something in between.

Heat a frying pan, pour olive oil on it and fry the onion. Not too much, so that it becomes transparent. Then add the carrots, mix and fry until the oil begins to turn slightly yellow.

Then add pepper and celery. If there is very little oil left, add more. Stir and fry for a couple more minutes.

Now it's the zucchini's turn. It will give juice during cooking. Cover the pan with a lid and simmer everything for 15-20 minutes.

It's time for the potatoes. It can be fried together with other vegetables, but this time we put it in the pan after the zucchini. We simmer the vegetables, stirring gently until they soften, and at the same time, in another bowl, heat the water or broth to a boil.

Pour boiling water over the future brew. If we want the food to be thick, we will limit ourselves to a minimum of water, approximately 1 liter. If not, pour more. Bring to a boil, maintaining low heat. After boiling, add salt and pepper and herbs. It is better to add peppers and herbs to the soup no earlier than 20 minutes before the end of cooking, so that their smell does not evaporate.

We also suggest you watch a video about making Italian Minestrone soup

Minestrone with Bacon.

The first time we prepared a purely vegetable soup, and now let’s imagine that we managed to get hold of lard. And not just lard, but with layers of meat - pork belly. If it is salted, let's call it bacon.

One onion;
One carrot;
One sweet (bell) pepper;
One young zucchini;
Two large potatoes;
One tomato;
Green peas - the third part of the cup;
A couple of cloves of garlic;
A couple of celery stalks;
Water or, if available, vegetable broth 1-1.5 liters;
Salt, black and aromatic ground pepper, olive oil for frying - to taste;
Bacon - 200 gr.

We take the same thing as the first time, but now add a piece of bacon the size of your palm or two, as many as you have. Cut it into small pieces. And then we do everything the same as last time with small changes:

Previously, we added potatoes after the zucchini, and now we’ll add them after the carrots and lightly fry them to create a crust.

And together with the zucchini, add chopped brisket or bacon.

Let it brew and serve it also sprinkled with cheese.

Italian vegetable soup Minestrone - Recipe

We saw that in the first two recipes our soup was quite labor-intensive. Let's be lazy now. We won’t fry anything, but start cooking right away. At the same time, replace the peas with beans and the carrots with pumpkin. The next day, soak the beans in water.

One huge onion;
One huge carrot;
One sweet (bell) pepper;
One young zucchini;
Two large potatoes;
One large tomato;
Peas – 1/3 cup;
A couple of cloves of garlic;
A couple of celery stalks;
Vegetable broth 1-1.5 liters;
Salt, black and aromatic ground pepper, olive oil for frying - to taste;
Parmesan cheese - slice.

Let's cut the products larger. Pour the soaked and swollen beans into a pan with cool water, wait until it boils, add salt and add everything else. We check the readiness of the beans. And don’t forget to let it brew and sprinkle with cheese before serving.

In conclusion, one little secret from the chef: if you don’t have Parmesan, use Dutch or Poshekhon cheese, just don’t tell anyone, in order to preserve the real Italian spirit.

Minestrone

From time to time, a memory arises that for Italians, minestrone, like borscht for us, is something global, super-popular and very spiritual. The title itself shows respect for this first dish: minestra - soup, ending -one - magnifying. Thus, a large soup comes out. This means that the dish is quite complex and consists of a huge number of ingredients.

Despite the apparent complexity and number of different ingredients, this is a light, mostly vegetable soup, to which a small soup paste is added, sometimes rice. Depending on the season, region and mood, the vegetable composition varies widely. From time to time, soup is prepared with chicken or meat broth, but vegetable soup is much more common.

Typically, minestrone contains legumes - chickpeas or lentils, beans, peas. In addition, the usual soup vegetables are onions and carrots, celery, potatoes, various types of cabbage. Peeled tomatoes are often added. Similar soups have been known since the times of Old Rome, but tomatoes and potatoes found their way into the soup after the discovery of the New World. Well, most Italian soups, various herbs and sauces based on it cannot do without it.

Due to the fact that there is no fixed and accepted recipe for soup, the dish may vary depending on the region. From time to time, the vegetables are removed from the broth and crushed - the soup comes out as thick as puree. The most watery options involve the introduction of vegetables in the form of pieces of various sizes. In addition, vegetables can be slowly fried for soup, or eaten raw.

There are a huge number of regional variations of minestrone, which differ in composition and cooking method. Most of the differences come from certain ingredients common to a particular region - pesto, tomato paste, spaghetti, etc.

The base of the soup is broth, this is important. A decoction of vegetables or meat broth should be rich and fragrant. Even if the vegetables are not fried before boiling, this is not difficult to achieve if you use a lot of new vegetables. At the same time, it is absolutely not necessary to use them all in the soup. It’s striking that modern hypermarkets sell plenty of frozen sets of prepared vegetables for soup.

Minestrone

Minestrone soup is a celebrity, a brand, a catchy image of Italian cuisine along with pasta, risotto, pizza, a precious restaurant dish with rustic roots, a most delicious experience for discoverers and a renowned delight for connoisseurs.

Real Italian minestrone is a thick, rustic soup made from seasonal vegetables with the addition of pasta, with parmesan and basil crumbled into it when serving. From time to time, pieces of ham - prosciutto - are added to the minestrone. Or use rice instead of pasta, and pesto sauce instead of Parmesan.

Ingredients

In order to prepare minestrone, you will need:

zucchini squash 300g
onion 100g
potatoes 150g
carrots 70g
tomatoes 200g
bell pepper 150g
small pasta 50g
garlic 1 clove
hard cheese 20g
olive oil 7 tbsp.
water 1250 ml
salt 2 tsp.

Manufacturing

It is customary to make small vegetable cuts for minestrone; all the pieces are approximately the same size - a little larger than a pea, and this is not a whim, but a development: finely chopped vegetables absorb olive oil well when frying and do not lose their shape when cooked. In addition, due to their size, they are prepared quickly. Painstakingly fried pieces of vegetables, with the crust intact, without losing their own juiciness during stewing, are the goal of the first step in making minestrone.

Cut onions and carrots into small cubes. In order to somehow identify the bell pepper in the soup (we’ll create an exception for pepper), we cut it not into cubes, but into narrow strips. The soup will become even more elegant if you use bell peppers of different colors.

Zucchini must be cut in half lengthwise, seeds removed and cut into small slices.
If your zucchini is quite mature and the skin has already become stale, it is better to peel it off so that there are no coarse fibers in the soup. Peel the ripe tomatoes and cut them into small slices; during frying, they will release juice and lose their shape, so the size of the slices is not so important.
Potatoes must be washed, peeled and cut into small, even cubes. While we are frying vegetables, I advise you to soak the potatoes in cool water.

When heating 5 tablespoons of oil in a deep-bottomed frying pan, make sure that the oil does not get too hot, especially if you are using refined olive oil. Vegetables for minestrone should be fried over low heat, simmering, so when the oil heats up, add the chopped carrots and onions and fry, stirring for about 5 minutes, until the onion becomes transparent.

Add the bell pepper and garlic, cut into thin slices, into the pan and continue to fry, stirring for about 5 minutes. The combination of onions, garlic, peppers and carrots with olive oil fills the kitchen with the inimitable smell of the vegetable season.

Add chopped zucchini to the vegetables in the pan, pour in another 2 tbsp.
olive oil and continue frying over low heat for 15 minutes. Place the chopped tomatoes in the pan and fry, stirring, for 5 minutes, during which time all the zucchini slices will become transparent.

Place the fried vegetables in a saucepan. Some cooks prepare minestrone in a saucepan with a thick bottom, in which they fry vegetables, and then add water and continue to cook the soup.

Fill the vegetables with 1250 ml of cool water, so that they do not lose their bright colors, and bring to a boil. We will also cook the soup over low heat.

When the soup boils, add salt and add the cooked potatoes. Despite the fact that the potatoes are finely chopped, it is better to cook them for 15-20 minutes to make the soup more rich.

Remember when I wrote that minestrone is a soup half consisting of blended vegetables? Right now is the time to mash the largest part of them and keep the smallest part constant so that the soup remains textured and not puree-like. Use a slotted spoon to remove a small portion of the boiled vegetables and set aside for a while.

Grind the remaining vegetables in the broth with an immersion blender until smooth. Just don’t try to turn them into semolina porridge! Let the pieces remain that are not completely ground, nothing terrible will happen. The main thing in this action is the effect: interpenetration, mixing of tastes.

Bring the soup to a boil and add small pasta. For soups, Italians use small-sized pasta - horns, stars, shells. I broke the rule a little and sent a not very small pasta in the shape of hearts into the soup. But great! Cook the pasta for 2-3 minutes and that’s it. Once brewed, they will certainly reach full readiness.

How is minestrone served? Cheese, basil, pesto - all this is served on a plate. Either it is placed on the table, where anyone is free or not free to add flavors to the minestrone themselves.

Minestrone soup is a traditional recipe. Types of dishes with bacon and vegetables

Any state cuisine has its own personality, classic and favorite dishes. Let’s now get acquainted with one of the usual dishes of Italian “folk” cuisine. We bring to your attention “Minestrone soup – a traditional recipe.”

What is Minestrone Soup?

Italian cuisine is famous for its culinary delights. Minestrone is one of the most popular soups in this country. The simplicity of production and the selection of goods that are used is captivating.

At the same time, the history of this soup goes far back into the past, into the sixteenth century. It is curious that there is no single set of goods for this soup. It varies depending on the season, harvest, and location of the Italian region where it was prepared.

What is Minestrone now?

Having passed the test of centuries, this “national soup” is a full member of the menu of almost all Italian restaurants. Every cook adds his own twist to the recipe.

It is now generally accepted that a real traditional Minestrone should be based on the rule of 7, in other words, contain seven of all ingredients: 7 types of vegetables, 7 types of different meats, 7 types of herbs. No one really understands where this worldview comes from. Most likely, this is an interpretation of modern restaurateurs.

Minestrone soup recipes

Despite the multiplicity of recipes and variations of soup, there are general principles that are constantly taken into account by chefs who undertake the production of Minestrone. Firstly, all products are cut very finely. Secondly, they are fried in olive oil. Naturally, this is an Italian dish and this oil is common in Italy.

Well, cutting into small pieces allows the products to be thoroughly saturated with oil. Now, having received a general idea of what Minestrone is, you can move on to practice. So, the minestrone soup dish is a traditional recipe in 3 versions.

The most common production

Before all this, you need to prepare the required set of ingredients:

onion – 1 large piece;
carrots – 1 large;
zucchini - young one;
sweet pepper – 1 piece ;
tomato – large 1 piece ;
green peas – about 100-150 g ;
potatoes - a couple of large tubers;
garlic - one or two cloves;
celery – 1 root;
pasta (preferably small in size) – 1-2 handfuls;
olive oil – about 50 ml ;
Water - about one and a half liters;
cheese (preferably Parmesan) – 100 g ;
salt, pepper, seasonings to your taste.

As already noted, all components need to be crushed. The smaller the pieces, the better.

The preparation is complete, you can begin the process:

Add oil to a preheated deep frying pan and fry the onion until transparent. Add carrots there, stir and continue to fry;
Next add bell pepper and celery. Mix and fry again;
It was the turn of the zucchini. A young zucchini will definitely give juice. You can cover the pan with a lid and let the vegetables simmer for about 20 minutes;
The potatoes can be fried separately, or they can be added to the vegetable mixture. And simmer everything together, remembering to stir carefully so as not to burn. Add green peas and tomato at the end;
Now you can move all the cooked vegetables into a saucepan of the appropriate size, then add hot broth or water. The amount of water is determined by your preference. If you like it thicker, you can add much less water;
There was some pasta left. Their quantity is a matter of taste;
Now you need to bring the soup to a boil over low heat and cook until the pasta is ready;
The final touch is salt, aromatic pepper, herbs in accordance with your preferences.

You can naturally serve it right away, sprinkling it with grated Parmesan already on the plate. But if you let the soup brew, it will taste even better. Fragrant fresh herbs (parsley, dill, basil will not be superfluous, but will give the dish a unique smell).

Minestrone with bacon

As already noted, there is no one accepted recipe for the dish. And if the first option is simply vegetable, we will add our own “zest” to this one - bacon, which we will add to the already familiar ingredients. The main thing in the manufacturing technology is a small cut.

So let's get started:

cut into small pieces: onion, carrot, potato, bell pepper, zucchini, garlic, tomato, celery stick;
fry all this one by one in vegetable oil;
Fry finely chopped bacon (about two hundred grams) in a separate frying pan and add to the soup at the very end of cooking.
and don’t forget about the green stuff (dill, parsley, chives – whatever you like best).

Italian vegetable soup Minestrone

Another variation of the Italian “folk” Minestrone. This is perhaps the quickest and most common recipe. It can be called “Italian Minestrone soup with beans”:

Let's change the set of goods slightly: instead of green peas, we use beans and add pumpkin. All other vegetables from the previous options are in this recipe. We remember that real Minestrone should contain a lot of vegetables.

Let’s simplify the manufacturing technology: we’ll skip the preparatory roasting and start cooking right away.

The beans must be soaked in cool water in advance, possibly overnight (that is, in the dark) . This is where we begin the cooking process, because it takes a long time to cook.

Easy to cook:

Place the beans in a saucepan, pour the required amount of water and cook for 20 minutes;
add all the ingredients one by one: potatoes, carrots, pumpkin, onion, bell pepper, zucchini, celery, garlic, tomato. Cook until done;
Add salt and spices to taste at the very end of cooking.
The final touch is Parmesan and greens.

Now several common and affordable options have been proposed, united under one title: “Traditional minestrone soup recipe.” Try it, maybe some of them will suit your taste.

Video: Minestrone soup - recipe from the chef

Rate this article:

Did you like the article? Share with your friends: