Slow Cooker Minestrone Soup

Slow Cooker Minestrone Soup is super comforting, deceptively hearty and loaded with tons of your favorite vegetables! Take 15 minutes to prep and let sit in your slow cooker, then come home to a perfect, healthy, restaurant-style winter soup the whole family will love.

Looking for more easy slow cooker soup recipes? Try my Slow Cooker Chicken Tortellini Soup, Slow Cooker Tortellini Sausage and Kale Soup or my Slow Cooker Chicken Enchilada Soup!

Slow cooker minestrone soup

Say goodbye to boring Minestrone Soup! I’ve made other crockpot minestrone soup recipes and all of them were pretty disappointing. I found that they didn’t have much depth of flavor and were pretty bland.

So I set out to make a Slow Cooker Minestrone Soup that wasn’t bland and was full of flavor!

Flavor Enhancers

• Instead of regular diced or crushed tomatoes I used fire roasted tomatoes for extra flavor and a hint of smokiness.
• A lot of recipes simply add the veggies straight to the crockpot. I sautéed my carrots, onions and celery in a skillet with olive oil before adding it to the slow cooker. This extra step only takes a couple minutes but builds so much flavor!
• I also deglazed the pan the veggies were sautéed in to get the “fond” aka flavor off the bottom of the pan and into the soup.
• Instead of just using vegetable broth or water I decided to do a combination of vegetable broth and beef broth. The beef broth adds a lot of needed flavor!
• After the soup if finished cooking I add in 1 whole cup of chopped parsley and 2 tablespoons of fresh basil! The fresh herbs really help to brighten up the soup.

Ingredients

• Fire-roasted tomatoes: Instead of regular diced tomatoes or crushed tomatoes I like to use fire roasted tomatoes for extra flavor and a hint of smokiness.
• Mirepoix: Diced carrots, onions and celery are sautéed in a skillet before adding them to the crockpot. This quick step develops a lot of flavor and shouldn’t be skipped.
• Garlic: I add 5 whole garlic cloves to the soup! Feel free to add more to taste.
• Rosemary: 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary are added. If you don’t have fresh rosemary you could use fresh thyme instead or just used dried rosemary.
• Spices: I add Italian seasoning, bay leaves and red pepper flakes!
• Parmesan rind: Adds a hint of cheesiness and flavor to the soup.
• Zucchini: Diced zucchini is added to the soup along with the pasta.
• Ditalini pasta: Is a small Italian style pasta that you can find in the pasta section at the grocery store. If your store doesn’t carry Ditalini pasta any other small pasta like elbow macaroni would work.
• Beans: Use both cannellini beans (or white northern beans) as well as red kidney beans. Make sure to drain and rinse the beans before adding to control the salt level of this soup.
• Fresh spinach: Gets chopped up and added to the soup along with the pasta. I don’t recommend using frozen spinach fresh works best in this recipe!
• Broth: I like to use BOTH vegetable broth and beef broth for the soup. I think the combination adds so much more flavor!
• Fresh herbs: Chopped basil and parsley add so much fresh bright flavor to the soup! Use whatever herbs you have on hand to brighten up the soup.

How to make Slow Cooker Minestrone soup

This soup is ridiculously easy to make. Throw all of the ingredients in a slow cooker and let it do its magic. This soup is cooked low and slow for up to 6 hours or 2-3 hours on high.

1. Sauté vegetables / Deglaze pan: Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Add in carrots, celery and onion and sauté for 3-4 minutes or until the veggies start to get some color on them.Add the vegetable broth to the pan that the vegetables were cooked in.

• Add in the garlic and cook for an additional minute.Transfer the veggies to a slow cooker.Deglaze the pan by scraping the brown bits off of the bottom. This adds so much flavor to the soup.
• Transfer the stock to the slow cooker with the vegetables then add the beef stock, tomatoes, parmesan rind, rosemary sprigs, Italian seasonings, bay leaves, Worcestershire sauce and crushed red pepper flakes.

1. Slow cook: On high for 2-3 hours or on low for 4-6 hours.
2. Cook pasta and beans: Add in zucchini, spinach, pasta, beans and cook on high heat for an additional 30 minutes or until the pasta is tender.

1. Season and serve: Soup to taste with salt, pepper and crushed red pepper flakes if desired.Serve immediately with parmesan cheese for serving!

more delicious soup recipes to try!

• Italian Ham and White Bean Orzo Soup
• Tortellini Tomato and Spinach Soup
• Easy Ham and Bean Soup
• Shrimp Pho
• Instant Pot Chicken Noodle Soup
• Italian Meatball Soup