Chicken and leek barley soup
A warm chicken soup with soft leeks, carrots and pearl barley.
About 55 min · 405 kcal · 36 g protein per serving
Minestrone with white beans and pasta
A vegetable soup with white beans, small pasta and Parmesan.
By The foodose editorial team. Nutrition calculated from USDA FoodData Central. Checked on paper on 22 September 2026; not yet cooked in a test kitchen or photographed, so the times and yield are estimates. How we develop our recipes
What still needs a real kitchen
- Confirm small pasta cooks through in 9 to 11 minutes in the soup
- Photograph the finished bowl
- Time
- About 55 min
- estimated
- Serves
- 2
- see below
- Energy
- 570 kcal
- per serving
- Protein
- 28 g
- per serving
Ingredients for 2 servings
Check off ingredients as you go.
Contains celery, gluten, milk. Check the labels on packaged ingredients:
- chopped tomatoes. Tinned tomatoes vary in added salt; the sodium figure uses a standard salted tin.
- vegetable stock. Vegetable stock often contains celery, and some contain milk or gluten; check the label, especially if you need it vegan.
- pasta. Most dry pasta is just wheat and water, but some contains egg; check the packet.
- Parmesan. Parmigiano Reggiano is made with animal rennet, so it is not vegetarian. Vegetarian Italian-style hard cheeses are widely sold.
Cooking steps
Dice the onion, carrot and celery small and soften them all together in the oil over medium-low heat for 10 to 12 minutes.
Add the tomatoes and the stock, bring to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes.
Add the diced courgette and the pasta and cook for 9 to 11 minutes, until the pasta is tender. Cook it in the soup, not separately.
Fold in the drained beans and warm through for 5 minutes.
Take the pan off the heat, tear in the basil and serve with the grated Parmesan.
The useful detail
Cook the pasta in the soup rather than draining it in from another pan. The starch it releases is what gives minestrone its body, and a soup made with separately cooked pasta is thin.
Make it work for you
One serving is A deep bowl, half the pot. You can switch to a smaller portion in the ingredients above; it is three quarters of this, and it contains correspondingly less energy and protein. It is an option, not a goal.
Vegetarian hard cheese instead of Parmesan
Identical on the soup, and it makes the dish vegetarian.
Per serving: about the same energy, about the same protein, about the same fat.
Borlotti or cannellini beans
Either works; this is what the recipe assumes. Nutrition is not recalculated.
Leave out the pasta
Thinner and lighter, and the soup keeps far better overnight.
Estimated nutrition
Per standard serving, calculated from the ingredients above. Nutrition changes with substitutions, brands and how much oil stays in the pan.
A vegetable soup that is a meal, because 400 g of beans across two bowls does what a handful of vegetables cannot.
| Energy | 570 kcal |
|---|---|
| Protein | 28 g |
| Fat | 12 g |
| of which saturates | 3 g |
| Carbohydrate | 91 g |
| of which sugars | 17 g |
| Fibre | 19 g |
| Sodium | 2,310 mg |
Show calculation notes
Each ingredient’s weight is multiplied by its USDA FoodData Central values per 100 g. The whole recipe is added up and divided by 2. Raw weights are used for meat, fish and vegetables; beans and lentils are drained weights. All of the oil is counted as eaten. Added salt is not included; sodium from stock, bread, cheese and tinned food is.
| Ingredient | Weight used | Source | Energy | Protein |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| onion | 120 g | FDC 170000Onions, raw | 48 kcal | 1.3 g |
| carrot | 120 g | FDC 170393Carrots, raw | 49 kcal | 1.1 g |
| celery | 100 g | FDC 169988Celery, raw | 14 kcal | 0.7 g |
| olive oil | 14 g | FDC 171413Oil, olive, salad or cooking | 121 kcal | 0.0 g |
| chopped tomatoes | 400 g | FDC 170051Tomatoes, red, ripe, canned, packed in tomato juice | 64 kcal | 3.2 g |
| vegetable stock | 785 g | FDC 171583Soup, vegetable broth, ready to serve | 39 kcal | 1.9 g |
| courgette | 150 g | FDC 169291Squash, summer, zucchini, includes skin, raw | 26 kcal | 1.8 g |
| pasta | 60 g | FDC 169736Pasta, dry, enrichedFoodData Central records dry pasta as one entry rather than by shape, so linguine, lasagne, cannelloni and shells all use it. | 223 kcal | 7.8 g |
| white beans | 400 g | FDC 175204Beans, white, mature seeds, canned | 456 kcal | 29.0 g |
| fresh basil | 10 g | FDC 172232Basil, fresh | 2 kcal | 0.3 g |
| Parmesan | 25 g | FDC 170848Cheese, parmesan, hard | 98 kcal | 8.9 g |
| Whole recipe | Divided by 2 | 1139 kcal | 56.1 g |
Per serving the energy is rounded to the nearest 5 kcal, grams to the nearest whole gram and sodium to the nearest 10 mg. Calculation method 1.0, September 2026. How the calculation works.
Storage and reheating
- In the fridge
- Cool it quickly, cover and refrigerate within 2 hours. The FDA chart gives soups and stews 3 to 4 days. The pasta keeps swelling and will be soft the next day. Add it fresh if you are making it ahead.
- In the freezer
- The same chart gives soups and stews 2 to 3 months in the freezer for best quality.
- Reheating
- Reheat until it reaches 74°C / 165°F, steaming hot throughout, stirring so it heats evenly.
Checked against US Food and Drug Administration, Refrigerator and Freezer Storage Chart, USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, Leftovers and Food Safety, FoodSafety.gov, Safe Minimum Internal Temperatures and FoodSafety.gov, Cold Food Storage Chart. UK guidance from the Food Standards Agency is shorter, at two days for most leftovers.
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