How to cook perfect minestrone soup

Until recently, I didn’t do minestrone. This prejudice was based on the powdered version we were served at school; brick red, strangely tangy, and studded with suety strands of pasta, yet which, despite these obvious handicaps, often proved the least of a veritable feast of evils – I must have eaten it at least twice a week between the age of eight and 13, and not once since.

Turns out, however, that the school kitchen was not adept in the art of the minestrone – in fact, most Italians probably wouldn’t have recognised their effort as such. Far from a watery tomato sauce with unpleasant soggy surprises lurking in its depths, minestrone seems to be a soup-shaped excuse to get as many seasonal vegetables into one dish as possible, moistened by a light broth, and bulked out with beans, potatoes, rice – or broken pasta (which, with the benefit of hindsight, I believe the little white worms were supposed to represent). Incredibly simple, handily versatile – and, according to Giorgio Locatelli, “the best soup in the world”. And you know what? I’m with him. At least, it’s definitely in my top five.

As Giorgio says in his excellent recipe collection, Made in Italy, minestrone is one of the few dishes to unite the country – “yet everyone makes it differently, with whatever vegetables are in season”. As confirmation, the classic Italian cookbook the Silver Spoon gives no fewer than 10 versions (although admittedly, one of these is a minestrone alla russa – aka borsch): one from Puglia, in the far south, based on their beloved turnip tops, or cime di rapa, a Neapolitan take heavy with Mediterranean peppers and aubergines, which makes an interesting contrast with a recipe from Milan, with its bacon lardons, parmesan and sage. What follows is thus intended as basic guidelines, to be cut to whichever cloth commands your allegiance.

Stock answers

Given the simplicity of minestrone, the liquid element, in which all the other ingredients are cooked, is supremely important. The most basic recipes use water – after all, if the stuff you’re adding is flavourful enough, it should become a tasty vegetable soup on the job. This is a method employed by Elizabeth David in the minestrone verde recipe given in Italian Food, and also mentioned as a possibility by Locatelli, but despite the pedigree, the result needs an awful lot of seasoning to lift it from the blandness that many Marie Antoinettish proponents of cucina povera choose to ignore in their favourite peasant dishes.

Giorgio doesn’t make any such scrimping in the Locanda Locatelli kitchen however (and, with minestrone selling at £9 a bowl, nor should he), using a “good vegetable stock” instead. He gives a recipe, but also suggests making a quick variation using the trimmings, plus a few peas for sweetness. Wanting the full Michelin-star experience however, I make the bells and whistles version which also includes peas alongside some of the more usual subjects – the restaurant’s “secret ingredient”, according to its chef. This gives the broth a much better flavour, and the finished soup needs less salt.

Angela Hartnett admits the possibility of using vegetable stock, if vegetarians are involved, but insists it tastes best using the chicken version – and I have to agree with her. The broth is richer and more savoury in flavour, so it doesn’t get lost in the mass of beans and leaves; you can really taste it in every mouthful.

Jamie Oliver, meanwhile, has a secret ingredient of his own. “Minestrones can be made with water or vegetable stock,” he writes in Jamie’s Italy, “but the most memorable ones I’ve eaten have been made from the light broth that you get when making bollito misto”. Although chicken stock is fine, he reckons that, “to knock people’s socks off” cooks should boil up a knuckle of gammon with some smoked pancetta, wine, peppercorns and bay leaves, eat the meat with beans, and use the liquid as a base for a minestrone.

It seems like an extravagance, but then, I’m tireless in the pursuit of perfection, so I follow his instructions – and conclude that, although minestrone shouldn’t be shy and retiring, this version might have gone too far in the other direction. The salty, smoky flavour of the pork dominates the soup: I’m left pondering whether it would be acceptable to stir in a spoonful of mustard instead of the pesto common in its homeland.

Hearty = meaty?

Minestrone is often lauded for its hearty qualities (the name means “big soup”), evoking romantic visions of peasants as brown and gnarled as their olive trees (Italian soups are “rough and crude and full of personality” according to Jamie, “very much like some of the old Italian faces”) – but, in keeping with its thrifty origins, many are largely vegetarian. Jamie, however, adds smoked pancetta or bacon to his soffritto (the melange of sweated vegetables that forms the base of so many Italian dishes), as does Elizabeth David in two of her four minestrone recipes (a third uses gammon).

I’m not keen however; the meat seems to be surplus to requirements here, and I’ve never been a fan of rubbery boiled bacon in any case. There’s enough olive oil in this dish without adding anything else. (On that note, Angela uses a mixture of butter and olive oil, while the Silver Spoon talks of the “essential butter, bacon fat, oil or lard” in the recipe. Given all my recipes call for a drizzle of olive oil to finish the dish off (as Locatelli recalls from his childhood, “we weren’t a family big on olive oil – at that time, olive oil wasn’t used much in the north – but you couldn’t have a minestrone without olive oil over the top.”), and that I can’t taste the butter in the final dish, I decide to keep things simple and stick with oil.

A question of starch

One of the things I like most about minestrone is its sheer bulk: it’s really a big bowl of carb-based joy, with a hefty garnish of vegetables to gladden the heartstrings of health. Locatelli explains that “whatever ingredients you use, a good minestrone has to have the right balance between the starchy element … and the vegetables.”

That element, however is up for debate: Angela Hartnett uses potato and suggests pasta as an option, Jamie opts for pasta and cannellini or borlotti beans and the Silver Spoon goes for long grain rice or short pasta. Locatelli himself comes down in favour of potato and borlotti beans. Interestingly though, he admits in the introduction to the recipe that, at home “I like to make minestrone the way my grandmother did it, adding rice – which makes it so thick that you could stick your spoon into it upright and watch it fall down slowly.” (“I have never done it in the restaurant” he continues sadly, “a little too rustic.”) I try his version with arborio, which, as he says, makes the broth “really creamy” – and it’s wonderfully thick and comforting.

Extras

Most recipes for minestrone follow the same basic pattern – soffritto, vegetable, stock, starch – but Jamie stands out by sticking in tinned tomatoes and a glass of red wine. (The Silver Spoon’s Genoese version has fresh tomatoes, but as these don’t break up so easily, they remain part of the vegetable matter rather than the sauce.) It smells good, but it’s a completely different animal to the others – the broth should be savoury, but understated, rather than this garlicky, almost Frenchified beast.

The same recipe in The Silver Spoon features dried mushrooms, which I dismiss for the same reason: no one ingredient should dominate here, and porcini have a distinct tendency to bully. The same, in my opinion goes for the pesto such north-western recipes often add at the end (Locatelli included): pesto takes over, while a sprinkling of parmesan and a few basil leaves only enhance.

Keep it fresh

Finally, a word about cooking times. I love Italian food, but it can’t be denied that they love their meltingly soft veg (if they were British of course, they’d be accused of murdering them, but such is gastronomic relativism). The Silver Spoon minestrone cooks for over two hours, by which time the French and broad beans are reduced to mush – I found Locatelli’s advice, about only adding the vegetables gradually. “You can cook all the vegetables together if you are in a hurry, but the proper way to do it is slowly, adding [them] in stages, so that they are all cooked to the same consistency and keep their own identity, with the potatoes only just soft. It’s up to you.” For my taste, the vegetables should be softened, but still firm enough to present some challenge to the teeth, or the whole thing becomes more of a savoury rice pudding for the infirm.

Perfect minestrone

Minestrone is a wonderfully versatile dish that works with whatever seasonal vegetables you happen to have to hand – just make sure the broth is flavourful enough to give the dish character, without overwhelming the other ingredients, and there’s enough starch to satisfy even the most active Tuscan goatherd.

Serves 4

3 tbsp olive oil, plus extra to serve
1 onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, crushed
2 carrots, cut into 1cm dice
2 sticks of celery, cut into 1cm dice
Seasonal vegetables of your choice (at the moment, 1 courgette, diced, handful of fresh peas or broad beans, half a head of fennel, diced, 3 large leaves of cavolo nero, shredded)
1.5l good quality chicken stock
1 potato, cut into 2cm dice
100g cooked and drained borlotti beans
200g risotto rice
Grated parmesan and a few basil leaves, to serve

1. Heat the oil in a heavy-based pan and add the onion and garlic. Soften over a medium heat for 5 minutes, without allowing them to colour, then add the carrots and soften. Repeat with the celery.

2. Add the rest of the seasonal vegetables in order of cooking time (courgette and fennel will take longer than peas or fresh beans for example) and allow to soften slightly – they don’t need to cook through at this point. Stir in the potato.

3. Add the stock, the borlotti bean and rice. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for about 15 minutes until the potato and rice are cooked. Season to taste.

4. Serve with a drizzle of olive oil, a grating of parmesan and some torn basil leaves. (If you make this ahead of time, you’ll find the rice swells to absorb much of the liquid, so it’s best to make it without the rice, then add it when you reheat it. Alternatively, you can loosen it with more stock.)

Minestrone is surely the world’s most versatile soup – is there anything you wouldn’t put in yours, and what do you like to top it with? Does anyone like theirs chilled, and is there a British equivalent of this soup for all seasons?