The Marinara Sauce Hack For A Lightning-Fast Minestrone

If you have a bunch of vegetables that won't yield enough for a full-on salad, turning them into soup may just be the ideal alternative. Minestrone is an Italian soup that comes packed full of vegetables; better still, it's easily customizable and perfect for using up whatever you have on hand. Plus, it can easily be made entirely vegan if you're cooking for those who prefer to eat plant-based foods. But simmering soup from scratch can take a while; when you want to make tomato minestrone soup, there's a super easy way to whip some up quickly. While some recipes call for tomato paste, you can use marinara sauce (even the leftovers from your last pasta night) to achieve an even better flavor for your soup. 

All you'll need to do to make the base of the soup is mix half a jar of marinara sauce with an equal amount of your desired broth or stock. Once the sauce has been thinned out, add it to your saucepan to allow it to heat up.

Before you add your sauce and broth mix to the stovetop, you'll want to sauté your other diced vegetables in some oil to bring out their flavor. Some of the most common vegetables added into the soup include celery, carrots, onions, and boiled potatoes. You could add some zucchini, peppers, peas, or mushrooms. Once you've poured in your jar of marinara sauce and broth, you can season the soup with some salt, pepper, garlic, and herbs to taste.

Marinara sauce starts with a tomato base, which is an essential flavor in minestrone, but other additions often used in making the sauce can add some extra nuances to your soup as well. The pasta sauce typically includes garlic, basil, and other seasonings like oregano. While this makes the sauce taste great alongside pasta or on a pizza, it can also help enhance the taste of your minestrone and give you a great base to start cooking with. Some sauces even include red pepper flakes, which can add a hint or a wallop of spice to the sauce, depending on how much you sprinkle in.

Once your minestrone is simmering, you can add in some cannellini beans, pasta, lentils, kale, or arborio rice to bulk up the dish a little more. Cooking the pasta (or rice) in the broth will imbue the noodles or grains with some extra flavor, making every bite that much tastier. Then, you can garnish your bowl with a sprinkling of parmesan before serving for a dose of nutty sharpness.

If you find that your brothy sauce has made your soup runny, adding one of those starchy ingredients may be essential. The starch from the grains could lend itself to the soup to thicken it up a little. You can also remove a little bit of broth to add to your blender and puree it with canned beans. Then, add the mix back into the pot and combine it with the rest of the soup. The next time you want to make a filling dinner of minestrone but don't have all day, just grab a jar of marinara; you'll be feasting in no time.