Vegan Minestrone alla Milanese

You may not be familiar with this type of vegan minestrone, but I’m sure you’ll find it comforting. Modeled after a minestrone I had in Milan, it has a creamy broth infused with thyme, rosemary, and saffron. It is a nourishing meal in a bowl, with a variety of veggies, plus rice, beans, and potatoes. {Gluten-Free}

What kind of vegan minestrone?

I know. This minestrone surprised me, as well. I thought all minestrone was the tomato based one. Just like you get in the can from Campbell’s. But it turns out that there are multiple kinds of minestrone.

My wife and I were in a random trattoria in Milan for dinner last fall when we saw minestrone on the menu. We ordered it, expecting that tomato-based one, but what we got was almost like a chowder. It was thickened with potatoes and the broth was a distinct saffron yellow color. It was really delicious, but in a way that it’s really difficult to point out what specific seasonings and spices were used.

Recreating the soup

It had been about a month since I’d had the soup when I decided to recreate it. My goal was to use as many of the same vegetable ingredients as possible and just create a very well-rounded and savory broth.

I knew there had to be saffron, so I included that. I went with rosemary and thyme on a hunch, thinking they would lend some nice aromatics. I also threw in nutritional yeast at the end, at the risk of becoming cliche with that ingredient, and it really (honestly) made the soup shine.

It’s hard to say for sure, whether we nailed the flavor of the Milan trattoria’s minestrone. But my wife and I both agree that this one is every bit as satisfying.

The cooking process for this vegan minestrone

Most of the work is related to prep. There are a number of veggies you’ll need to chop. I chopped them all into a small dice, but you can chop them larger to save time, as long as the pieces are all roughly the same size.

Once your prep is done, cooking goes quickly. You saute the onion, carrot, and celery in oil with some salt, then add broth. Then add the potato, rice, cabbage and spices. Boil that for a bit, then add beans, kale, and zucchini. Stir in the yeast and serve. That’s it.

It should take 25-35 minutes to cook, depending on the size of the pieces you chop, the heat level, and your preferred level of doneness.

Cooking notes

Saffron is uncommon and expensive. Feel free to skip it.

If you’d like to make substitutions, focus on the zucchini, cabbage, kale, and beans. Do not change the onion, celery, carrot, or potato – they are the core of this soup.

Chickpeas and pinto beans make good replacements for the white (cannellini) beans.

You can replace the kale with spinach, but if you do, add it right before serving. Spinach needs much less time to cook.

Yellow squash works just as well as zucchini.

If you can, tie the thyme and rosemary in a piece of cheesecloth or use an infuser. This will keep them from falling apart in the soup and help maintain a consistent flavor.

Instead of mixing in all of the nutritional yeast at once, you can serve it on the table and season each bowl individually, as you might with parmesan cheese. Do be generous with the nutritional yeast.

More vegan dinner recipes

• The Only Vegan Chili Recipe You Need
• Vegan Tonkotsu Ramen
• Vegan Enchiladas
• 3-Ingredient Vegan Creamed Spinach