Easy Spring Minestrone Soup In Only 20 Minutes

Super tasty and packed with amazing flavour this spring minestrone soup recipe ticks all the boxes for the perfect comforting yet refreshing soup for spring.

Why you’ll love this soup recipe

• This spring minestrone is the ultimate transitional soup, getting you from hearty winter soups into lighter summer recipes
• Super healthy packed with gorgeous greens
• Spring minestrone soup is economical using broken pasta and veggie bits and pieces
• Real food fast – this is a 20 minute soup recipe!

It’s springtime so lighter meals but still with that comforting vibe is what we’re all looking for. Check out my Spring Section for more super seasonal recipes.

Ingredients for this soup

This spring minestrone soup uses up all sorts of green veggies. In fact you can just use whatever odds and ends you have in the fridge. Here’s what I used to make my minestrone.

• Bacon – just two rasher chopped up to really add some flavour to the minestrone
• Onion, leek, celery and garlic – this is your soup base
• The liquid – white wine and chicken stock (feel free to use vegetable stock instead)
• The greens – I used courgette/zucchini, green beans, broccoli, asparagus and peas (frozen!)
• Flavour – A bay leaf and dried oregano
• Pasta – no real minestrone soup can be without pasta! Use a small pasta like macaroni or mini pasta shapes.

Pro Tips

I use what I call my pasta smash for this spring minestrone soup recipe. This is all the bits and bobs of broken pasta that’s leftover from other recipes and my pasta packets. I keep all these in a jar so I can use them to add some thickening and texture to soup whenever I fancy.

How to make this minestrone soup

There are basically three simple steps to making this spring soup.

• First you want to saute the base for the soup. That’s the onion, celery, leek, bacon and garic. The important thing here is that you just want to soften the veggies and not let them get to the browned stage. This’ll only take you 5 minutes.
• Now add the chicken stock and dry white wine to the soup along with the bay leaf and dried oregano to get that real Italian flavour into your minestrone and of course the pasta. Simmer your soup for 5 minutes.
• Finally, add those all-important greens to this spring soup. Make sure everything is chopped up nice and small and about the same size so that the soup cooks evenly. Now just let this gorgeous spring minestrone soup simmer for 10 minutes and it’s done.

Green minestrone

I’ve gone all out to make this a real springtime soup by just using green veggies in my minestrone. But feel free to add carrots, cauliflower or any other veggies that you happen to have around.

How many does this serve?

This homemade spring minestrone soup recipe will serve 4-6 people depending on the size of bowls you’re using. Personally, I do like a huge bowl of soup!

Storage

Your soup will keep for 4 days in the fridge if you don’t use it all on the first day. You can freeze spring minestrone soup for up to 3 months.

Alternatives

Make this a vegetarian minestrone soup by omitting the bacon and using vegetable stock instead of chicken.

Use any green vegetables that you like for this spring minestrone, from beans and peas to cabbage, kale, spinach or sprouts.

Serving suggestions

I like to serve spring minestrone soup with a dollop of homemade pesto just to add even more gorgeous Italian flavour to this light and tasty soup.

Anyone who is a regular to this blog will know I adore pesto, I even wrote a book about it – A Passion For Pesto, where I share over 50 recipes for making all sorts of pesto from the usual herbal pestos to those made from veggies and even weeds too. Oh, and there are sweet pestos for desserts as well.

For that all-out celebration of springtime I’ve served my light minestrone soup with wild garlic pesto. Now this really is springtime in a bowl!

Or just add a swirl of good olive oil and a sprinkling of parmesan and some garlic bread on the side for the all-out Italian experience.

Looking for more delicious soup recipes? Then check these out before you go;

Watercress and spinach soup

Easy Mediterranean vegetable soup

Quick and easy pea and ham risotto soup

Cream of nettle soup with potato peel crisps

Low calorie pea and lettuce soup

Avgolemono – Greek egg and lemon soup

Finally, if you do try this recipe don’t forget to leave a comment/star rating below as I just love to hear from readers. Want more Larder Love? Then follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter and sign up for my newsletter too of course.