The Best Minestrone

And some prolonged nattering

Spring is coming. Can you feel it? The light is changing. For better and worse, the world is real.

The suffering that paralyzes us right now with fear and dread—it feels chaotic and unfathomable, and it is, but it’s also made up of a collection of individual human lives. We are being asked to hold these truths together right now: to appreciate suffering on a large scale and behave collectively in response; but also to remember that it’s individual imperiled lives and we can be powerful and helpful on that scale too. The good news about that is probably obvious, but I’ll say it: you can reach out to a trans teen or feed someone hungry or pay someone generously for their time or knowledge or will to live or otherwise share resources with a person in need, and these are all acts of loving resistance, reducing little by little the misery that makes up the bigger horror. Actions big and small. We need all of it. I’m reading Heather Cox Richardson and Rebecca Solnit to stay informed about what is happening. I’m following Jessica Craven to learn what daily actions to take. I’m in the the water here, but I’m not drowning, if you know what I mean.

Anyhoo, soup! Ha ha ha! But actually! Because what an act of caretaking it is, making a pot of soup—whether you’re taking care of a hungry group of people or a sick neighbor or a group of beloved friends or your own family or your own self. I am nourishing you is always the vibe.

And Michael is usually who I’m nourishing because of the empty nest, sigh. So here’s the habit I’ve gotten into: I make us a pot of beans: 1 pound of beans brought to a boil in well-salted water and then quick-soaked for an hour before getting pressure cooked (if you think the Rancho Gordo hype isn’t real, you’re wrong). The first night we eat beans to our heart’s content—with or without rice—and then I save the remaining beans and all of the bean-cooking liquid and use it the next day to make the world’s best minestrone, which we eat for days. Of course, you can make minestrone without bean-cooking liquid too, with canned beans, and it will be wonderful. But using the bean water satisfies the scrappy part of my soul that has a passion for making do (aka epigenetic wartime rationing trauma inherited from my mom oh well).

This minestrone is a riff on a Marcella Hazan recipe that my mother has been making since 1980, and that I have been making since my friend Ali gave me the paperback of her cookbook in 1989.

The secret ingredient here is long cooking and an absence of herbs and spices, which sounds weird, I know. But it’s truly magical: “a soup of mellow, dense flavor that recalls no vegetable in particular but all of them at once.”

I thought that pasta and kale were in the original recipe, but I see now that they’re not. Also, in 1986, as I recall, kale was more of a salad bar garnish than a vegetable.

The Best Minestrone
enough to feed 6 to 8 people

You can cook this on the stove top, in a pressure cooker, or in a slow cooker—it will turn out great regardless. It’s okay to use vegetables that might be just past their prime, malingering slightly in your fridge, but this is not one of those anything-goes soups, because winter squash will make it too squash-y, broccoli will make it too broccoli-y, and dried herbs will make it taste like diner minestrone, which is not usually what I’m going for. That said, I do sometimes add brown rice at the beginning instead of pasta at the end. Do add a parmesan rind if you have it, and don’t skimp on the olive oil. Based on Marcella Hazan’s Minestrone alla Romagnola.

1/3 cup olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
Kosher salt
2 carrots, diced
2 stalks celery, diced, with a handful of chopped celery leaves if you see them lurking in the middle of the bunch
3 or so cups chopped, slivered, or shredded white (green?) cabbage
2 optional cups of diced zucchini and/or green beans cut into 1-inch pieces (very Marcella Hazan, but I tend to skip these)
2 Yukon gold or other potatoes (about 1/2 pound), peeled and diced
A few large leaves of kale, ideally the very dark dinosaur/lacinato type, stems removed and leaves shredded (optional)
1 cup canned tomatoes (diced, crushed, pureed, or broken-up whole)
4 cups bean-cooking liquid (or vegetable or chicken broth)
2 cups water
Strictly optional parmesan rind, if you have one handy
1 or 2 or 3 cups or 1 or 2 (15-ounce) cans pinto beans, red beans, pink beans, white beans, or kidney beans, drained if canned
1 cup small pasta tubes (ditalini is my favorite, but elbow macaroni is totally fine)
Olive oil and grated parmesan for garnishing

1. Heat the olive oil in a wide pot and sauté the onion with 1 teaspoon of salt (or less salt if your bean liquid or broth is highly salted) over medium low heat, until it’s translucent, about 10 minutes. Now add the carrots and celery and sauté for 5 minutes, then add the cabbage and sauté for another 5 minutes. You can sauté some of the veggies while you prep the others, and it will unfold fairly organically. If you’re using the optional veggies, add those last.

2. Add the potatoes, kale, tomatoes, broth, water, and a parmesan rind if you have one, bring to a boil over high heat, then lower the heat to low, cover, and cook for around 2 hours, stirring occasionally (you can cheat and cook for 1 hour, need be, or really commit to the bit and cook it for up to 3), stirring occasionally. Excuse the run-on sentence. Add the beans around an hour before you think you’re going to stop cooking it. Taste the soup for salt.

3. The pasta: You’re really supposed to cook it separately in salted water and then drain it and add it in so that it won’t be overcooked or sop up all the liquid, but I actually like to add a little extra water to the soup and cook the pasta directly in it. As you prefer. When the pasta is tender, taste the soup again for salt, then serve it topped with a generous glug of olive oil and a thick sprinkle of parmesan.

Cooking variations: If you want to do this in your Instant Pot, you can sauté all the vegetables and then add everything else including the beans and raw pasta and pressure cook it all at the beans or soup setting (1/2 hour) and let it release naturally for at least 10 minutes; the pasta might be kind of crazily swollen from this. If you want to slow-cook it, follow the recipe through step 1, then put it all in the slow cooker and cook 4 hours on high or 8 hours on low; add the pasta, cooked in well-salted water, a little before you think it’s done.