So, today we're going to make a three-bean minestrone.
And this is a classic Italian minestrone with lots of vegetables.
Either vegetable or chicken stock.
And beans.
So all the ingredients that we have for the soup are in front of us.
We have our onion, we're gonna use celery and carrots,
then we're gonna go into our Yukon Gold potatoes, and our zucchini,
and our beans - we cook that for a while, then we add our tomatoes,
parmesan rind, and in the very end, we'll add some fresh spinach.
So, the concept of this dish is building upon flavor with all sorts of vegetables.
So, we're going to start with the classic ingredients of onions, carrots, and celery.
So, I'll dice those up. And I'm gonna get everything organized so....
We can cook in order. So the process of this will take about an hour of actual cooking,
and we add things in proportion to how long they take to cook.
So, let me do a little bit of chopping here. We'll come back and start the soup.
Okay, so now that we've diced some of the vegetables, we want to cook the base of the soup.
And this is traditionally called a "mirepoix," your onion, carrot, and celery.
We're going to cook it in order of.... starting with onion. So....
We're gonna do 1/2 a cup of olive oil.
Our onion. When we cook this down, for about about 10 minutes, and sweat the onions until they're soft.
We're also using a tablespoon of butter with the olive oil.
So, those are.... beginning step to this minestrone.
[sizzling sounds]
And then we'll come back in a few minutes, and add our carrots and our celery.
And then of our other ingredients will be our zucchini and potatoes. And at that point, we're adding our beans.
And we're gonna take the rind of a parmesan.
And this will be an ingredient we add to the soup. And it cooks in the soup throughout the whole process.
And it imparts a flavor and imparts a little bit of a texture. And in the very end, we'll take that out.
And then we garnish the soup with some of the fresh grated Parmesan.
So, the flavors infused. It goes well with the beans.
We'll come back in a few minutes to do the next step.
So we've been cooking these onions for about 10 minutes
and they're beginning to get translucent.
we'll add our carrots.
And our celery.
[sound of metal spoon hitting metal pot]
Our parmesan rind. We're going to add our beans.
Doing a mixture of cannellini, pinto, and butter beans.
And our two quarts of chicken stock.
Okay, so we're gonna bring this soup to a simmer, and cook it for about 45 minutes. The beans get a chance to start to cook.
The vegetables cook down. That'll be kind of the base flavor of our minestrone.
Then we come back, we'll add our zucchini and our potatoes.
Cook for another 15 to 20 minutes. And then we finish with our tomatoes,
and our fresh spinach.
In the very end, we finish with salt and pepper,
a little bit olive oil. And we'll have a great soup.
Okay, so coming back to the soup, we've had a chance for about 40 minutes here to simmer the very first part of our soup.
Our vegetables and our beans, our parmesan rind....
So we wanted to develop a nice base flavor. Now we come in with the other vegetables.
We wouldn't add all the vegetables at once, because we want some of the texture of the vegetables at the end. So, at this point....
we're gonna add our diced Yukon Gold potatoes.
And our diced zucchini.
And you see I kept the skin on both. Its nutritious, and it's good color and good flavor.
So, at this step I want to cook it for about 15 minutes.
And then I'm gonna come back, and then I'll add my tomatoes and my spinach. And we'll be almost done with the soup.
So, we've had about 10 minutes to actually cook our zucchini and potatoes.
I think that's enough that's gonna move on to adding our tomatoes.
In the summer, you can add fresh ripe diced tomatoes.
In the spring and winter, when your tomatoes aren't that nice, I like to use canned tomatoes.
The concept here is to add the tomatoes, and I want to cook it for another 10 to 15 minutes, to kind of cook the acid out of the tomatoes,
and kind of mellow it out. And in the very end....
is when I'm going to add my spinach. And I'll season to taste with salt and pepper.
Finish it with our olive oil and we'll present our soup.
So, the last step on our minestrone will be to add the spinach.
I didn't want to add this earlier, because it would overcook. So I want to have the bright green.
And basically, our soup is almost done,
except for our spinach, olive oil, salt and pepper.
So, basically I just want to do a rough chop on this.
[chopping sounds]
About four cups of spinach.
So, I think we're ready to serve our three bean minestrone.
It's a classic Italian soup with cannellini beans, pinto beans and butter beans.
And we just finished it with a spinach. At this point, it's a matter of seasoning with a salt and pepper.
And we'll serve some up, here.
I'm going to garnish this with a little bit of fresh grated Parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil.
And there we go. Three-Bean Minestrone.
Enjoy.