Pretty Pepper Minestrone
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
olive oil, as needed
1 large onion, chopped
6 carrots, sliced
6 celery stalks, sliced
2-3 green, yellow or red bell peppers, sliced
6 cups vegetable broth
2 (15 ounce) cans tomato sauce
1 (15 ounce) can diced tomatoes
1/2 cup red wine, optional
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 (15 ounce) can red kidney beans, drained
1 (15 ounce) can white kidney beans (cannellini), drained
1 (14 1/2 ounce) can green beans, drained
1 (10 ounce) package frozen spinach
1 1/2 tablespoons dried basil
1 1/2 tablespoons dried oregano
salt and pepper, to taste
8 ounces pasta (I use spirals), optional
1. Sauté garlic in olive oil until golden. Add onion and sauté for a couple more minutes. Add sliced carrots, celery, and bell peppers. Sauté about 5 minutes.
2. Add veggie broth, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, brown sugar and red wine, if using. Bring to boil. Lower heat to simmer. Add beans and spinach (I just throw it in frozen.).
3. Add basil, oregano, salt and pepper. Simmer at least 20 minutes, longer if you can. Meanwhile, cook pasta according to package directions. Add pasta to soup just before serving.
I like this with a sprinkling of nutritional yeast.
Whenever this soup is in the house I eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. As a matter of fact, I just ate some for breakfast! It is very filling and super nutritious. If I am preparing this as the main meal I add the pasta. If I am serving this as an intro to a main course I leave out the pasta since it makes it very filling.
Hope you enjoy!
SO HOW'D IT GO?
This soup is fantastic so far (It's still simmering for a while, as the carrots are taking quite a while to cook). I had to use red beans, since the store didn't have kidney beans OR canellini beans (which I found extremely weird; it's a big store, they should have had at least one of the two in stock!), but they don't take away from the minestrone flavor at all. I also added a zucchini in place of one celery rib and one carrot, and I used an orange pepper and a yellow pepper. I ended up using almost 3 TBSP of salt, and I also ended up with barely any room left in my pot! If I had cut the veggies any larger, I'd have been SOL :3. I was sure this made a lot of soup, but I think I underestimated just how much. Overall, I really like it, but I'll probably make another review once it's ACTUALLY done (even though I've been nibbling at it like crazy :3). Thanks for this recipe, the house smells fantastic and I think dinner will be wonderful!
This recipe is tasty, but a little too sweet for my tastes with 1/4 c of brown sugar. Next time I'll start with a few teaspoons of brown sugar before I dump in any more.
I just wanted to add that for whatever reason this soup is really filling. To make a meal of soup and salad, I usually eat a couple bowls of soup. A little over a bowlful was all I could eat. I'm not sure why it is so filling. I definately will make this often.
This is really good. It is much more tomatoey than I was expecting, but that's not a bad thing. I used garbanzos instead of red kidney beans, because that is what I had. I also only used 1 pepper, because my daughter HATES them and used extra spinach and green beans instead. I will make this often. As an aside, your photos always make me hungry. You make everything look wonderfull.
SO good. and easy! i made it earlier this week in the evening and have been enjoying it for lunch ever since! i halved the recipe (and there's plenty) also, i used no spinach and twice the amount of green beans. no pasta either, i was afraid it would get soggy. turned out beautiful.
I really liked this! I'm a soup person, and a huge fan of minestrone, and it was delicious. I had to cut back on ingredients a bit because my pan was overflowing. This soup lasted the 2 of us a few days, and it was good heated up. It's a fav!