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An easy to make, Minestrone soup recipe that tastes 1000 times better than the Olive Garden’s version! My minestrone soup is loaded with good for you veggies, like spinach and zucchini. It’s also protein packed with red kidney beans and great northern beans. You’ll be full for hours from this healthy, nutritious soup!
How about I throw a bunch of ingredients (say, veggies, beans, and pasta) into a crockpot and call it dinner? This slower cooker minestrone soup is probably going to be the easiest thing you’re ever going to cook. And the best part? You didn’t even need to turn on the stove!
I wonder if it’s even legal for me to call this a minestrone soup recipe? It’s ingredients that get tossed into the slow cooker and a few hours later, they come out in the form of a soup. Don’t you just love lunches and dinners like that? This gal right here is a big fan of those kinda meals.
This minestrone soup was one of the very best I have ever tasted. The sun-dried tomato pesto absolutely made this soup truly “over the top”.
Minestrone Soup Recipe Video:
So guys, I have news. I ♥ vegetables. And you already knew that. And now you know it even more.
My hope for you with this soup → that you make this on a really chilly and busy October night. It’s absolutely perfect for those days/nights when you have only 3,018,857 things to get done, and the fact that the crockpot is adulting for you and taking on the dinner responsibilities for the evening means you have the 30 minutes you would’ve spent making dinner to do what. ever. you. like.
Real excitement right there. Ideally, that would happen in a big, comfy chair with a good book and a warm blanket. These oh so rare, picture-perfect moments are brought to you by my slow cooker minestrone soup recipe.
Why this is the best minestrone soup recipe:
Shall I dare say my minestrone soup recipe is better than the Olive Garden’s version? Yes, I think I will. Don’t get me wrong; I first fell in love with Minestrone soup at the Olive Garden. It actually set the expectation of what a minestrone should be for me. The canned stuff was absolutely no good at all. And after researching the interweb until there weren’t any more recipes left to research, I decided to develop my own recipe.
So what makes my recipe unique and so much better? Well, I’ve got a secret ingredient. Any guesses? Okay, I’ll give you a hint. It’s in the picture above. And it’s a red blob. No, not the diced tomatoes, the other red blob.
*Shhh* I’m only sharing this with you because we’re friends. Ready for it?
Homemade Sun-dried tomato pesto!
That super concentrated flavor of tomato pesto is exactly what minestrone soup needs. Plus, the basil, parmesan, and pine nuts in the pesto add such a great, full-bodied flavor to the soup.
Also, since we’re sharing secret ingredients and all, toss in a few parmesan rinds into the minestrone soup. For herbs, I used dried oregano, fresh rosemary (because I had fresh on hand, dried is fine too), and a few bay leaves.
Recipe Tip
I should mention that this does make quite a batch of soup. So if you’re planning on making this for weekly lunches, I suggest cooking and keeping the pasta separately. Then you can add some to each serving before reheating.
This slower cooker minestrone soup is exactly what you need to warm up on a chilly evening. I served it with a few slices of baguette, toasted and rubbed down with a garlic clove.
We dipped, we dunked, and sipped, slurped soup (say that 3x fast) like it was our job. Garlic bread pairs beautifully with minestrone soup! It was a good evening. 🙂
Homemade Minestrone Soup (Slow Cooker)
Equipment
Ingredients
- 2 (14.5 ounce) cans diced tomatoes
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 1/4 cup sun-dried tomato pesto homemade or store-bought
- 1 parmesan rind
- 4 cups vegetable stock
- 2 cups water
- 1 cup carrots diced
- 1 1/4 cup celery diced
- 1 1/2 cup white onion diced
- 4 – 5 cloves garlic minced or pressed
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 sprig rosemary or 1/2 teaspoon dried
- 2 bay leaves
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 (15-ounce) can red kidney beans drained and rinsed
- 1 (15-ounce) great northern beans drained and rinsed
- 1 1/2 cups zucchini diced
- 1 1/2 cups ditalini pasta or other small shapes
- 1 cup frozen green beans thawed
- 2 1/2 cups baby spinach chopped
- Parmesan cheese grated
Instructions
- Add the diced tomatoes, tomato paste, tomato pesto, parmesan rind, vegetable stock, water, carrots, celery, onions, garlic, oregano, rosemary, and bay leaves to a slow cooker.
- Season with salt and pepper to taste and cook on low heat 6-8 hours or high 3-4 hours.
- Add in red kidney beans, great northern beans, zucchini, and pasta and cook on high heat for an additional 20- 25 minutes until pasta is tender.
- Stir in the spinach and green beans and cook for an additional 5 minutes until heated through.
- Serve warm topped with parmesan cheese and garlic toasts.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Like This? Leave a comment & rating below!
Yum! Made this for Christmas Eve dinner, and it was truly fabulous! I was excited to find the pesto at our local Aldi-what a great secret ingredient. 🙂 I sautéed the veggies before starting the soup and my poor little crockpot just didn’t have room for the spinach at the end-but it was SO good! Thank you for sharing. 🙂 Merry Christmas!
I made this for Christmas Eve dinner, and it was perfect!! Put it on before we all went to church and came home to a beautiful soup with minimal effort. I served it with mini grilled cheeses (prosciutto and gruyere) and the meal got rave reviews from our guests. Everyone asked for the minestrone recipe! Success!!
Hello Christmas Eve 2016 Dinner!!! This recipe looks incredible and will sure to be a crowd pleaser!!!
Made this over the weekend, and it tastes terrific. My only issue is that there is no liquid left. It’s like the pasta soaked it all up. I’m not sure what could have happened – I followed the directions exactly. I’ve decided to call this one Minestrone Goulash for now. ?
Glad to hear you liked it! The liquids tend to get soaked up by the pasta if the soup sits for too long. You can also boil the pasta separately (according to package directions) and add it into individual bowls if you’re expecting leftovers! That should help solve that problem 🙂
Hi! I’m excited to make this. I’m planning on having this as a meal for 10-11 people. Would you suggest doubling the recipe? Or will this stretch?
If you’re serving it as the main course, you may need to double the recipe. I’d say one batch would probably feed 6 if you’re just serving it with bread and salad. Hope that helps!
Thank you!
I just made this. OH MY HECK! It is sooooooo good. Love the spinach and the sundried tomato pesto. This will make it into our keep file.
What can I use instead of zucchini? I’m not a huge fan of it the taste really turns me off.
You can replace it with additional green beans and some more baby spinach if you’d like. Butternut squash would work too but it would need to be added in much earlier than than the time stated for the zucchini so that it cooks all the way through!
Can you add meat to this,
Sure!
Hi Marzia, my husband made this soup yesterday while I was at work, cooking it slow over 8 hours, and I’m not sure what happened, but it came out really watery and somewhat tasteless. He swears he followed the recipe to the letter (I ensured he had every ingredient, as he’s a bit helpless otherwise). I felt like I needed to add a ton of salt and pepper to give it any real flavor, but then it was just salt and peppery. Did he do something wrong? I know that’s a very hard question to answer, but should it have gone longer than 8 hours on low? It was plenty hot, and the elbow macaroni (we couldn’t find the pasta you described) was cooked through, but not mushy. I’m hoping tonight, after 24 hours in the fridge, that the flavors will have gelled, and it’ll be as rich as you and everyone described. I normally love minestrone, and I’ve really enjoyed several of your recipes, so I’m sure your recipe wasn’t the problem. But I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I let him think it was fine. But even he said it seemed bland. Any suggestions? Thanks for (usually!) making our home cooking a lot easier.
Did you drained the beans
Hi Minerva, I’m not sure, but I’ve seen him drain before when we’ve made chili, etc. So I’d suspect yes. I typically do not, and just add less water/broth. If he did drain it, it should be less watery, but not necessarily more flavorful, right?
Hey Penny! Thanks for trying out the recipes I’m glad that you usually enjoy them 🙂 Hmm for the minestrone soup I’m trying to think of what may have been the culprit. One of the possible reasons could be excess water or maybe there wasn’t enough tomato pesto. Also, I haven’t ever let the recipe cook for more than 8 hours so I’m wondering if that may have caused the veggies to release excess water into the soup. You can try stirring in additional tomato pesto to your bowl if you’d like to add additional flavor to the cooked soup and hopefully that should make it more palatable. 🙂
Thanks Marzia. You might be on to something. That’d be just like him to cook it longer than needed, thinking it’d be fine. I’ll see if we have more pesto left and try adding it tonight. Thanks for the advice and all the great recipes!
Made this a few days ago on our newly bought slow cooker! My family absolutely loved it and we’ll be making it quite often i think 😉 great recipe!!
What can I use to replace the Parmesan rind can’t seem to fine any here where I live
No worries, you can simply omit it from the recipe, Minerva.
What is the serving size of the soup? One, two cups?
I can’t remember exactly now, but I think it was about 2 cups per serving.
Do you put the rind in whole or chop it up?
I add it in whole. it’s easier to fish it out that way before serving!
I love this simple recipe. It turned out wonderfully. Even though I used sun dried tomatoes with olive pesto instead. Thank you so much. I am going to check out your other recipes. 🙂
I’m literally eating this soup as I type and I can’t believe how delish it is!! Thanks for the great recipe… The pesto and parm were definitely key!!! 🙂
This is excellent soup! I’ve made it three times and this time was the best! The combination of fresh ingredients with the tomato pesto and Parmesan rind and spices is a wonderful! I’m going to freeze containers for easy meals.
That’s great Terri, I’m so glad to hear that it’s become a fave! 🙂
HI, have you ever tried this in a pressure cooker? do you think you would follow the above recipe in the same manner?
I haven’t. But it is on my list of things to try out. Would love to hear how it went if you end up getting to it before I do!
I am so happy with this soup! Although I am a professional cook, I do not overly enjoy making soups, but this one is timed perfectly, has such good ingredients(I did leave out the northern beans, just used kidney beans), and the flavour from the pesto is nothing short of perfection.It seems funny to be raving about soup this time of year, but we are having unseasonably cool weather, so this soup is so welcome right now! OH YUM!!!!! Thankyou for such a lovely recipe.
Wow! This was simply amazing!! All 6 people in my family loved it, even my 9 yr old who never eats veggies. This recipe was so full of flavor, and so easy. Perfect for summer, when we go to the pool, then come home to a nice dinner.
Hi there,
This recipe sounds amazing. I was just wondering if there was anything I should change if I were to use fresh tomatoes instead of canned ones.
Thanks.
I’ve only ever made this recipe with canned tomatoes so without further recipe testing, i’m not sure that fresh tomatoes are suitable substitute.
I decided to give it a shot and made the recipe with fresh tomatoes. It worked out perfectly! I just diced them up and threw them in at the beginning with everything else, so it was super easy.
This dish was incredibly delicious and popular with the family, so thank you so much for sharing it and warming up a few cold, busy nights I had last week. I live in Australia and the weather is cooling down now, so I’ll definitely be making this again.
The minestrone soup looks and sounds delicious! Your photo and its’ source have been featured on the World Food Guide website: https://worldfood.guide/photo/minestrone_soup_1091/
I just made this following the recipe exactly and it is delicious and hearty. Thanks so much for sharing it!