Never underestimate the preparation of a vegetable soup! Here's how to avoid the most common mistakes in preparing a minestrone
It's always a good time to prepare a minestrone. This dish is not timeless, but it is important to prepare it with seasonal vegetables.
Is minestrone a soup?
We can call it a vegetable soup, but in reality it is much more because minestrone is a joker and it can become what you want. There are those who love it naturally, only with a little oil and without pulses, who also enriches it with cereals, who season it with spices and aromatic herbs, who adds pasta, who eats it cold and who serves it hot and with a slice of toast on the bottom of the plate.
In short, a well-made minestrone never tires.
It is the ideal dish after days of culinary debauchery to get back in shape, but it is also a comfort food when you feel like a warm and light first course at the end of the day.
Minestrone recipe
There is not a single recipe of minestrone because, as we have anticipated, the vegetables used change every season.
For a winter minestrone use the black cabbage, the pumpkin, the broccoli and the cabbage, for the summer instead beans, tomatoes and basil at will.
At the base there is always a sauté of celery, carrots and onions on which is then added the rest extending everything with water. It is also possible to prepare a sauté with pancetta or pork rind to give even more flavor and it is added at half cooking.
Leaf vegetables such as spinach and chard cannot be missing, not even courgettes, potatoes and a little tomato to give color. Legumes must be soaked for 10-12 hours before and then cooked with the rest; or cooked separately and then added at the end.
The minestrone cooks for 35-40 minutes, until the vegetables have not released all their flavor and they will not have become soft. If there are also legumes, cooking is extended up to one to two hours.
Cereal and pasta can be added to the minestrone almost at the end of cooking by stretching everything with a little water and bringing it to a boil. With the pressure cooker the cooking times obviously halve.
The 5 common mistakes in making minestrone
Making some mistakes in preparing minestrone is very simple. Here are the five common mistakes we encourage you to avoid. Scroll through the gallery and find out what they are.
