Minestrone alla Genovese is one of the most famous main courses from Genoese cuisine. Born as cheap soup served at home for family dinner, it became a very requested dish in all the best restaurants.

For me minestrone represent the warm comfort you can find at dinner sit at that table, with your family, after a long long day.

You can cook minestrone genovese wherever you are if you follow these golden rules!

what to eat in genoa-minestrone

Minestrone Genovese: Golden Rules

Despite there is no standard recipe, there are some precise rules (You can break them, nobody is watching!):

Ingredients

  • Use fresh seasonal vegetables (but if you have some frozen broccoli during summer you can use them too!);
  • Think about the final texture when you choose the mix of vegetables. Usually leaves melt into water, legumes don’t, and the mix of the two textures is lovely. Finally if you love a creamy texture add one or two potatoes!
  • Add some small piece of well scraped Parmigiano crust at the beginning of the cooking, it will enrich the minestrone with their flavour;
  • No meat or meat stock please, just water and salt;

Cooking

  • Slow and long cook (approx 1 hour), don’t forget to stir the minestrone to prevent it from burning and sticking to the bottom of the pot;
  • At this point I usually bled a little bit of the mix, as I love the creamy texture with just few small pieces in it;

With or without pasta

  • Now you can add some short pasta (best if bricchetti) and cook for 15 minutes more (I usually have minestrone without pasta, I roast small pieces of old bread or focaccia (even better) and dip them in my bowl, TOP! Recommended!);

Density

  • Test the right density: try to stick a spoon inside the bowl, does it stay upright? This should be the perfect density (but remember that you can break the rules);

Special ingredient

  • Once the minestrone has been removed from fire add the special ingredient: a spoon of our celestial Pesto! Please make sure not to cook the pesto or it will loose its aroma.

Serving

  • You can serve minestrone in a terracotta bowl and leave it for 10 minutes standing;

Finally enjoy your minestrone genovese

  • When the temperature is fine I usually put one spoon of extravergine olive oil, two spoons of Parmigiano and enjoy your Minestrone Genovese!