Vegan Minestrone Soup Recipe

This easy Vegan Minestrone Soup recipe is packed full of fresh veggies, cooked pasta, and savory vegetable broth. You don’t have to wait for soup season to make this healthy one-pot meal. You can use an electric pressure cooker to make Instant Pot Minestrone Soup, or make this easy soup right on the stove top.

I love making healthy minestrone soup for my whole family and, the best part is, they love eating it! It’s also a great soup for meal prep – store in an airtight container and the flavors meld together so that the next day, the leftover soup tastes even better!

Where’s the recipe?

Here at My Crazy Good Life we write our recipes so that anyone can follow along and make them. If you’re a new cook, you’ll want to read through the post below before you jump to the printable recipe. You’ll find ingredient information, detailed cooking instructions, recipe tips, and even calculations for several different healthy eating plans.

If you feel more comfortable in the kitchen, you can skip past all of that to the simplified recipe card for this easy Minestrone Soup recipe.

Ingredients in Vegan Minestrone Soup

• Red onion: yellow onion would work fine too.
• Celery: if you ask me, celery adds a depth of flavor to any good soup recipe. In addition to it creating a delicious soup, it’s also loaded with vitamins and minerals.
• Carrots: carrots add a nice pop of color and subtle flavor to this vegetarian soup. They’re also an amazing source of vitamin A.
• Zucchini: zucchini is rich in antioxidants and an easy veggie to add to any dish that has a variety of vegetables.
• Spinach: fresh spinach is best for this hearty vegetable soup.
• Whole wheat pasta: I use elbow macaroni for this recipe. If you decide to use any other kind of pasta than whole wheat, you’ll want to cook for half of the time on the pasta package.
• Kidney beans: hearty beans are a great source of protein and fiber. I used canned dark red kidney beans.
• White beans: I used canned cannellini beans but you can use great northern beans if you prefer.
• Diced tomatoes: this adds a delicious tomato broth flavor to the soup.
• Vegetable stock: using low sodium vegetable broth or stock is a great way to add flavor without a ton of sodium. If you don’t need this to be a vegan recipe, you can use chicken broth instead.
• Oregano: dried oregano is a key ingredient in Italian seasoning.
• Basil: I use dried, but fresh basil added to the top of the cooked soup would be delicious.
• Sage: I love the earthy taste of sage in this recipe.
• Garlic: fresh minced garlic is ideal for this classic minestrone recipe.
• Parsley: I’ve only ever used dried parsley, but do know that some people prefer fresh parsley when they’re cooking.
• Bay leaves: bay leaves can do so much to enhance the flavor in a pot of comforting soup. Just remember to remove the bay leaf before eating!

How to make Vegan Minestrone Soup in the Instant Pot

1. Dice onions, celery, carrots, and zucchini. You can chop up your spinach too, if you’d like.
2. Turn your pressure cooker to sauté, spray the bottom of the pot, and add all vegetables except spinach.
3. After a few minutes of sautéing, add your spices (except bay leaves) to the pot. Stir to coat the vegetables with the seasoning, taking care not to cook your veggies for too long (they’ll finish cooking in a bit).
4. After your spices and veggies begin to smell amazing, turn the pot off and add pasta, bay leaves, beans, diced tomatoes, and vegetable broth. Note: you’re going to remove the bay leaves after the soup has cooked and before you eat it.
5. Close the lid and set valve to sealing. Set your pressure cooker for 4 minutes and hit start, if needed.
6. After the timer goes off and your soup is cooked, carefully open the sealing vent and allow the pressure to release.
7. Open the lid and add the spinach. Stir the soup and close the lid again for 2-3 minutes.
8. Open the lid and stir your soup. Find the bay leaves and pull them out. Add salt and black pepper if you’d like. Enjoy!

How to make Vegetable Minestrone Soup on the stove

1. Dice up your onions, celery, carrots, and zucchini. You can dice up your spinach if you like.
2. Turn your stovetop to medium-high heat and spray the bottom of a large soup pot (or add and heat olive oil) that you’re going to cook soup in. It should be big enough to hold vegetables plus 64 ounces of broth. Sauté all vegetables except spinach.
3. After a few minutes of sautéing, add your spices (except bay leaves) to the pot.
4. After your spices start to smell amazing add pasta, beans, bay leaves, diced tomatoes, and vegetable broth. Note: you’re going to remove the bay leaves after the soup has cooked and before you eat it.
5. Bring your pot to simmer (small bubbles rise from the bottom and occasionally break surface) and allow your soup to cook until your pasta is cooked to al dente. Check the cooking time on your pasta packaging, it should be around 10 minutes.
6. Once the noodles are cooked, remove the bay leaves, add the spinach to your pot and stir it into the soup. Allow to sit and wilt for a few minutes, then serve.

Recipe Tips

• If you’re adding a lot of veggies, you’ll want to add some extra broth.
• If you’re adding more pasta, you’ll want to add more broth because the pasta will soak it up.
• If you’re adding more pasta, you’ll want to add more spices. The extra pasta tends to absorb the seasonings a bit and make the broth more diluted tasting.
• Cut the heartier and more dense veggies into smaller chunks, and cut the less dense veggies into larger chunks. They’ll cook more evenly together this way.
• An easy way to reduce the carbs in this recipe is to cut the pasta and beans in half. It’ll still be a delicious soup!
• You can add meat to this soup if you’d like. Minestrone soup typically doesn’t have meat in it, so I didn’t add any. But the fun part about cooking in your own kitchen is that you can add what you like! I’d recommend a delicious Italian turkey sausage.
• If you want to make this a gluten-free recipe you can use gluten-free pasta in place of the whole wheat noodles. Just be sure to reduce the cooking time (I use this rule: half the cooking time on the package minus 2 minutes).
• One of the things I love most about this vegetarian minestrone soup recipe is that it is so adaptable. The ingredient list makes a wonderful hearty soup, but you can change it up to your liking. Some people like to add fresh green beans or other seasonal veggies, even leftover vegetables from last weeks dinner will work. You can also sprinkle red pepper flakes or parmesan cheese to the top if you’d like.

Healthy Eating Plans

Serving size is 1.5 cups

Weight Watchers: 2 Blue Plan Points | 2 Green Plan Points | 1 Purple Plan point per serving, as calculated on the WW website. The points are coming from pasta and beans. To make a zero point vegetable soup, remove the pasta and beans.

The points for the new 2022/2023 points plan is 1, when using fat free low sodium vegetable broth.

21 Day Fix: 1.5 green containers, 1 yellow container per serving. To reduce yellow to 1/2 yellow per serving, reduce pasta to 1/2 cup uncooked and 1/2 cup total of beans.

Trim Healthy Mama: This is a great E recipe when substituting brown rice pasta for the wheat pasta. In the pressure cooker, cook the soup for 1/2 the amount of time on your package of pasta. Also, use minimal oil when sautéing.

More healthy soup recipes

• Healthy Stuffed Pepper Soup with Bell Peppers
• Slow Cooker Chicken Bone Broth Soup
• Healthy Cream of Mushroom Soup
• Healthy Egg Drop Soup with Chicken
• Homemade Miso Soup Recipe
• Instant Pot Gazpacho Soup