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Minestrone Soup with Cannellini Beans

Good minestrone starts slowly: give the onion, carrot and celery a full ten minutes before anything else goes in. That base is where the flavour comes from. If you plan to freeze some, cook the pasta separately, or it swells and turns soft.

Lunch

45

Serves 4

Bowl of minestrone soup with cannellini beans, small pasta, kale and vegetables, topped with grated Parmesan

Ingredients

  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 2 carrots, diced (about 150g)
  • 2 sticks celery, diced
  • 2 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 1 courgette, diced (about 200g)
  • 1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes
  • 1 tbsp tomato puree
  • 1 litre low-salt vegetable stock
  • 1 x 400g tin cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
  • 80g small wholewheat pasta, such as macaroni or ditalini
  • 80g kale, stalks removed, shredded
  • 1 tsp dried oregano and a bay leaf
  • 20g Parmesan, finely grated, to serve (use a vegetarian hard cheese if you prefer)

Method

  1. Heat the oil in a large pan over a medium-low heat. Add the onion, carrots and celery with a pinch of salt and cook gently for 10 minutes, stirring now and then, until soft and sweet but not browned.
  2. Add the garlic, oregano and tomato puree and stir for 1 minute.
  3. Add the courgette, tinned tomatoes, stock and bay leaf. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 10 minutes.
  4. Stir in the beans and pasta and simmer for another 8 to 10 minutes, until the pasta is tender. If you are freezing some, cook the pasta in a separate pan and add it to each bowl instead.
  5. Add the kale for the last 3 minutes, until wilted. Remove the bay leaf.
  6. Mash a ladleful of the beans against the side of the pan and stir them back in. This thickens the soup without cream or flour.
  7. Season with pepper and taste for salt (stock varies a lot). Serve with Parmesan on top.

Why it works

One bowl has over 9g of fibre, nearly a third of the 30g a day the UK recommends, and most adults eat only about 20g. It comes from the beans, wholewheat pasta and six different vegetables. That fibre, with the protein in the beans, is why a bowl of soup this light, around 265 calories, keeps you full through the afternoon.

The cannellini beans also count towards your 5 a day, though beans and pulses only count as one portion however much you eat. The rest comes from the carrots, celery, tomatoes, courgette and kale.

The honest part is protein. At about 13g a bowl, this is a lighter lunch than it looks. Add a boiled egg or a slice of wholegrain toast with cheese on the side, or an extra half tin of beans to the pot, if you need more.

Watch the salt in the stock. Shop-bought stock is one of the biggest sources of salt in homemade soup, so choose a low-salt one and season at the end. Parmesan is not vegetarian, because it is made with animal rennet; vegetarian hard cheeses are widely available.

Meals built on legumes, vegetables and whole grains support heart health, which matters more for women after menopause: see menopause and heart health. For another bean soup, try the butternut squash and ginger soup with white beans.