What is minestrone? Minestrone is a classic Italian vegetable soup. It’s one of those dishes that is prepared in virtually all households in Italy, North, South and Center Italy, and – contrary to what some celebrity chefs or cookbook writers would want you to believe – there’s not ONE recipe. Think of minestrone as Art, there’s no paint-by-numbers, there are only general and vague guidelines so that everyone can make their own version of this wonderful super food.

Probably born out of necessity in rural Italy, minestrone is a hodgepodge of vegetables, in a light broth, served in different styles (see bottom of this post for serving options).

A few general guidelines:

• Minestrone is a strictly vegetable dish, not even chicken stock (there’s no chicken stock used in authentic traditional Italian cooking, EVER);
• It is not part of the “red sauce” family of cooking, alas a bit of tomato is often used, but it does not constitute the base;
• Fresh herbs are welcome, but no spices, and absolutely NO dried herbs.

The recipe in a nutshell: use as many of the traditional Italian vegetables as you’d like, the more the better.

Over the years I’ve tried many different recipes for minestrone, starting from scratch, using pre-packaged mixes of fresh vegetables, frozen mixes, none of them “hit the spot”. One day, while shopping in an Italian supermarket, I came across a frozen minestrone mix, that promised a delicious minestrone in 15 minutes, with no artificial preservatives, no artificial colorant, and I could pronounce all the ingredients. In all practicality it was a mix of frozen vegetables, uncooked, diced and mixed to perfection. I brought it home, added water, cooked it for 15 minutes and . . . it was delicious. So I looked at the list of ingredient and I reverse-engineered it, adding some ingredients of my own, substituting some other, and eliminating the lima beans. After a few trials I arrived at a couple of conclusions:

1. the quantity of each ingredient should be roughly equal;
2. the more ingredients the better.

Which poses a problem: if you use 10 ingredients, like I do, and you want to cook for 2-4 people, you’ll need to procure less than 1/4 lb of each ingredient, which is not easy: practically impossible.

There’s a solution: get 1 lb of each ingredient, and re-bag the mix into manageable sizes.

So, here we go, this is
my interpretation of the Italian Minestrone:

• 1 lb zucchini, diced;
• 1 lb red/yellow peppers;
• 1 lb spinach;
• 1 lb broccoli florets;
• 1 lb potatoes, diced;
• 1 lb petite peas;
• 1 lb green beans;
• 1 lb carrots, diced;
• 1 lb cooked cannellini beans;
• 1 lb very ripe tomatoes, diced;
• 1/2 lb of mesculum salad.

Divide all of the above ingredients into 8 1-gal size freezer bags, freeze 7 of them and prepare one right away.

To prepare your batch of minestrone:

• take a large pot;
• add your mix;
• add 3 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil;
• add 4 cups of water;
• cook on medium for 40-45 minutes;
• let it rest at least 15 minutes.

There are possible variations to the above recipe:

• add 1 lb of butternut squash;
• add fresh basil and/or fresh parsley;
• add an extra 1 lb of red beans for both flavor and color.

There are four variances to serve minestrone:

1. Plain minestrone, we could call this the minimalist minestrone. Just serve it in a bowl with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil;
2. Minestrone with pasta: add some ditalini pasta to the minestrone and serve it as is;
3. Zuppa: layer some toasted slices of tuscan-style bread on a bowl, and pour over a generous amount of the minestrone
4. Zuppa fredda: same as above, let it rest and chill in the refrigerator. Serve cold in a hot summer day.

Note about ingredients:   

• as usual organic is better than non-organic;
• fresh is better than frozen.

Enjoy!

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