Excellent. Flavorful.

This is a fantastic recipe! I made this the other night and couldn't get enough. I love that it's so loaded with veggies and other good thing, you don't miss the meat!

I have never made soup in my life! This turned out really good. I did change it some though. I added extra celery and carrots. Used one tablespoon of Olive oil instead of butter. A whole small can of tomato paste (only because I read it wrong, lol). Added extra garlic and salt. Added pepper and dried basil. Used fat free broth and added a packet of dry boullion too (sodium free). I put the cheese in the pot with the soup instead of the bowls...(next time I will try it before adding the cheese). I also added a pound of cubed stew meat. Turned out awesome and my boyfriend loved it as well. I counted all the calories and it was approx 255 per cup of soup. Not putting cheese in the soup and useing whole wheat pasta would lighten the calorie load.

Totally the BEST minestrone!! it's DELICIOUS. i use kidney beans. my husband loves it!!! thank you for the recipe.

Best ever!!!!! Used chicken anduilli sausage which was great. One of my fav's now...thanks for sharing.

No need to look any further for a yummy minestrone soup recipe. I made as directed except for cooking time when adding elbow noodles. They were done after 15 minutes of simmering. Thanks for a great recipe!!

I made this recipe and admittedly tweaked it quite a lot. However, I do think I came up with something very similar to the submitter’s version. I used olive oil instead of margarine and only one T. not four. I increased the celery to a generous 1/2 cup and bumped the carrots up to about 3/4 cup. I thought the amount of cabbage was negligible, and I didn’t have it anyway, so I left that out. I used diced tomatoes with garlic and olive oil, and instead of potatoes, I used a combination of zucchini and yellow squash. Lastly I subbed ditalini pasta for the elbows. As for the process, I tweaked that a bit as well. I sautéed the onion, celery and carrots for about 5 minutes, adding the garlic during the final 30 seconds. I then added the other ingredients, except for the beans and pasta. I gently simmered for 30 minutes, which was probably a bit too long. I would cut that back to 10-15 minutes next time, so the zucchini won’t be overcooked. I cooked my pasta separately and added it along with the beans and some fresh basil and just heated it through. Garnished with fresh parsley. My result was a delicious, veggie-packed soup that was low in fat and calories, but very satisfying!! We loved it!! UPDATE 3/26/13: I made this again as before but this time threw in some coarsely chopped fresh spinach at the very end, which was a very nice addition.

Very tasty soup. I like the fact that it wasn't overpowered with Italian seasonings like some minestrone recipes are. Just simple and delicious. The only changes I made were that I used fresh parsley in place of the dried, and spiral pasta instead of the elbow. Very healthy too! Thanks.

Excellent soup as written! I used olive oil in place of butter, increased veggies about 50% (carrots, celery, cabbage/coleslaw, garlic), added 1 can kidney beans instead of potato, and used 1/3 cup tomato sauce instead of paste for lighter tomato flavor. Added crushed red pepper and 2 cooked chicken/turkey sausages to liven it up. Also held off on cheese and added at the table to taste. Used 1 cup medium paste shells.

This was an extremely easy to make soup! I used low sodium chicken broth(70mg per serving), and it turned out great. The sodium content in most soups is outrageously high, but this one came to about 200 mg. sodium per serving after using low-sodium broth and no salt added tomatoes and paste. I cannot find cannellini beans in Central Texas so the next best thing were navy beans and northern beans, they were terrific! I highly recommend this recipe if you are looking for a quick, but pleasing meal for lunch or dinner paired with a salad. Thanks for the recipe, great job!