Minestrone Soup Recipe - Using Dry Minestrone Mix

In the Posh knitters forum on Ravelry a lovely member of the group started a thread called "Posh Nosh, Less Dosh" dedicated to tasty food on a budget. I contributed my Tarka Dal recipe and already there are a bunch of great recipes from the other members that I'm definitely going to try out, such as the Courgette Koftas.
Another nice meal which would classify as "Posh Nosh, Less Dosh" would be Minestrone Soup because most of the ingredients are relatively cheap. Minestrone Soup is also one of my favourite soups, especially when it is home made as it falls into the "hearty soup" category of my family meals repertoire. I don't just love it because it's tasty but because it is quite quick to make, easy (using only one pan and relatively few skills), healthy (with the addition of many vegetables, beans and pulses) and flexible as I often use left over bits of veg that have seen better days.

So here is my recipe using the Waitrose Quick Cook Minestrone Mix as my base. It's made up of a whole host of wholesome things like spelt, pearl barley, ditalini pasta tubes, green split peas, yellow split peas, yellow split lentils and red lentils. Most supermarkets sell a similar product and it's pretty cheap at about £0.70 a bag. I only used half a bag for the recipe below which serves 6. As a rough guesstimate, this recipe works out at less than £1 per head :-)

Minestrone Soup Recipe Using Dry Minestrone Mix
Serves 6

Ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil
6 x rashers of streaky bacon, cut into small pieces
2 x onions, finely chopped
2 x cloves of garlic, minced
2 x celery sticks, thinly sliced
2 x carrots, cut into small cubes
1 x courgette, cut into small chunks
1 x tin of chopped tomatoes
125g Quick Cook Minestrone Soup Mix (the "no need to soak" variety)
1 bay leaf
2 litres of good quality vegetable stock such as Swiss Marigold
1 tsp dried herbs such as oregano or marjoram
Freshly ground pepper
Fresh Parsley, chopped
Parmesan to serve

Method

• Make up 2 litres of hot vegetable stock. Pour in your dried soup mix and add in the bay leaf. Although the packet says the mix doesn't need pre-soaking and only takes 10 minutes to cook, I have never found this to be the case - it always needs longer and I hate over cooking the veg as they loose all their nutrients so by soaking them in the boiling stock while I get on with the first part of the cooking gives it a head start.
• Heat the oil in a large, heavy based pan.
• Fry the bacon bits until they start to brown. Then add the onions, celery and carrots and fry for about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and courgettes, reduce the heat, put on the lid and sweat for about 6 minutes.
• Now pour in the vegetable stock, minestrone mix and bay leaf. 
• Add the chopped tomatoes, dried herbs and freshly ground pepper and bring to the boil.
• Boil rapidly for 5 minutes and then reduce to a simmer. Simmer for 10 minutes or until all the veg and pulses (the pearl barley is the one to check) are cooked.
• Stir in a generous amount of freshly chopped parsley, dish up and lavish with parmesan.

Variations:

This recipe is very versatile... you can omit the bacon, or use ham hock, add more vegetables or different vegetables such as cabbage and red peppers. You can use tinned plum tomatoes instead of chopped. Parmigiano Reggiano is expensive so you could swap it for a cheaper hard cheese such as Grana Pedano or even cheddar would work.