Hey there Honey's and New-Bees!

There’s something wonderful about waking up and not having to worry about what you’re going to make for lunch, knowing you’re not going to have to settle on cafeteria or takeout food, and knowing that you’re stretching your dollar a little further by using up the food in your fridge, rather than letting it go to waste. Plus, it’s always great to have a warm, homemade bowl of soup on a cold winters day. 

During the winter months I like to end the week by making a large batch of soup to use up any leftover ingredients I have in my fridge, while also having a go-to, ready-made lunch to start the next week. 

Although I try to make a different soup every week, my go-to is almost always minestrone. For those of you who aren’t familiar with minestrone, it’s an Italian vegetable soup with beans and small noodles. Minestrone is really easy to make,  very nutritious, and a great way to minimize waste by using any leftover vegetables in your fridge. 

Hope you enjoy this wonderful homemade soup, and happy cooking!

If you’re not familiar with the term mirepoix, don’t worry, it took me a while before learning this term too. Mirepoix is a fundamental basic to cooking, and is the base for most soup, stews, curries, sauces etc… or serves as a bed for braised meats. Traditionally, mirepoix  is  2:1:1 onions, carrots, and celery, sautéed in butter or olive oil; but there are other variations such as the cajun mirepoix known as the ‘Holy Trinity’ where green bell pepper substitutes for carrots (and it is blasphemous to leave out of Cajun Gumbo or Ettouffée – pun intended). By lightly sautéing your “aromatics”, you slowly release their natural flavours, and provide a much deeper flavour to your recipe.

All that being said, mirepoix adds a wonderful flavour to your soup, and is simple to make. Simply dice your onion, carrot and celery and fry it in your dutch oil (or soup pot) with a little olive oil for about 5-7 minutes to release the aromatics of the vegetables.

Once your onions are translucent, add your garlic, beans, zucchini, bay leaf and tomato sauce to the pot making sure all the ingredients get coated with the tomato sauce, then add your oregano. Let the ingredients cook together for 5-7 minutes, then add your chicken stock. Alternatively, if you want to make this a vegetarian or vegan soup, replace the chicken stock with the same amount of vegetable stock.

The stock is not the only ingredient you can play around with while making this soup, and although I like to add oregano to my minestrone, feel free to add whatever spices you prefer. Over the years I’ve subbed out the oregano for whatever herbs I had available in my garden, such as basil or thyme.  The same goes for the vegetable and beans, traditionally minestrone calls for cannoli beans but I like lima beans way better. Try to use what you have on hand and feel free to play around with the ingredients; a lot of the time I’ve gotten the best results from improvising and getting creative – it’s also what makes cooking fun!

After you’ve added the broth, bring your soup to a boil, then lower the heat and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.

If you’re adding noodles to your soup like I did for this batch, add them to the hot broth about 10 minutes before serving. Although I used noodles for this batch, I don’t add them to batches that I want to keep for the week as the noodles tend to absorb a lot of liquid and I end up with a veggie stew rather than a soup. So my recommendation is to only add the noodles right before serving, and/or add them to small batches while you’re reheating the soup before eating.

Lastly, once you’re ready to serve, discard the bay leaf and top your soup with a generous amount of grated parmesean cheese and ENJOY!