Green Minestrone With Tortellini
This low calorie tortellini filled minestrone is packed full of green vegetable goodness and perfect for a quick to make dinner.
Looking for inspiration for a low calories, tasty, and quick to make mid-week lunch or dinner? Look no further. This here green minestrone is absolutely perfect for just that.
What is Minestrone?
Minestrone is an Italian soup that often made with the addition of pasta or rice, sometimes both.
Usually, minestrone will be seen with much smaller pasta, and often red in colour with the use of plenty of tomatoes and rich stock.
As you would of seen from the above photo and the title of this recipe. This minestrone is not your usual minestrone. Firstly, we’re not using small pasta, we’re using large tortellini and secondly, it’s not red, it’s green.
Recipe Credit
Now as much as I’d love to take credit for this recipe, it’s not one of my own. It’s a classic copy-cat recipe which I love to do from time to time.
The original recipe is from Cassie Best of BBC good food. The original recipe can be found here.
As it is, it’s delicious, heck, I wouldn’t be sharing it here if it wasn’t. However, if you’ve checked that recipe out you will notice I’ve changed a few things, this isn’t a like for like recipe copy.
Not much, just a few things from the comment recommendations and my own taste.
I’ve added less celery, lemon, and cabbage. Upped the addition of peas and added in some spinach.
Why you need to try this recipe
So what’s so good about this green minestrone you may be asking?
For starters and probably the most important note, It’s super tasty. Usually I’m not a fan of minestrone, just a personal preference but hey, it is what it is.
This one however, absolutely love it. It helps that I’m a big pasta fan and well, this has big pasta.
But there’s more to this which I love.
It’s super healthy
I’m in my current yearly health kick so anything healthy but also delicious is a big plus right now. And this is very healthy. Most soup is to be honest not so much most pasta.
It’s packed full with green veg and is mainly bulked out by stock. So what you end up with is a low calorie dinner, which is really filling and won’t leave you craving more, and is also full of nutrients.
It’s versatile
It’s also very versatile. Like I said, I’ve changed this from the original recipe but that doesn’t mean the original was not nice. You can add just about any greens in here that you like and it turns out well.
Pack it with summer greens for summer, winter greens for winter, go easy on the veg if you don’t want much, pack it to the brim if you love the veg. It’s completely up to you.
You can also change the pasta. Use macaroni, penne, gnocchi, whatever you like.
A great idea is to use stuffed tortellini which you can pick up from pretty much and supermarket. Popular options include Ricotta and Spinach, and 4 cheese.
Both go great, I actually used ricotta and spinach for this one.
It’s quick
Finally, its a quick and easy to make.
At a push, this is going to take you 25 minutes. Once you know what you’re doing, you could easily bang it out in 10 minutes.
As for the ease, it’s really hard to mess up. The prep is chopping a few ingredients and the rest of it is cooking veg with stock and pasta. Easy.
It’s also relatively cheap of a meal to make.
The tortellini pasta is probably the most high end ingredient in this. Stock is cheap as chips, as for the veggies and because of the versatility you can just pick up whatever’s in the bargain bin, and if you are making this in bulk and trying to save some pennies, you could always use a cheaper pasta and it will still taste delicious.
If budget friendly meals is something you’re really searching for at the moment, do check out my budget-friendly recipe tab here which is filled with budget friendly recipes that can easily feed a family.
I’ll be focusing on updating that with as many recipes and budget friendly guides as possible so keep an eye out.
The final thing to mention is my recommendation of a good pan. Get yourself a cast iron casserole dish, it will last a lifetime and you will use it constantly.
Anyone who already has one knows what I mean. It’s a good investment.
If you have the money, I’ll always recommend the Le Creuset which you can find on amazon UK for £202.
A cheaper recommendation that would still be good would be the Master Class casserole dish which is £41.20 on amazon UK or the Uno Casa from amazon USA for $49.95.
Green minestrone with tortellini
Ingredients
Instructions
- Heat the olive large pan and add the onion, leek and celery stick. Cook for 8-10 mins until softened.
- Then stir in the garlic and bay leaves. Pour in the vegetable stock, then cover and simmer for 10 mins. Add cabbage, spinach, peas, lemon zest and tortellini.
- Cover and cook for another 3 mins, season well and ladle into bowls.
Notes
Top tip
Instead of using plain tortellini, you can buy stuffed tortellini. Spinach and ricotta or 4 cheese are popular choices, both go well with this dish.
Nutrition Facts
Calories
261.88Fat
6.13Sat. Fat
1.87Carbs
41.19Fiber
5.23Net carbs
35.98Sugar
7.8Protein
11.55Sodium
1338.74Cholesterol
23.75The nutritional information shown is an estimate provided by an online nutrition calculator. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice. See our full nutrition disclosure here.
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Hi, I’m Cameron, guv’nor of Smartblend. If you liked this then you’re in luck, I have a bunch more recipes like it. I share only vegetarian and pescatarian food recipes, cocktails, and drink guides with a sprinkling of wellness and mindful drinking. If that sounds like you, then stick around!
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