"Canned" Soup: Minestrone

Note: This is not a USDA, nor FDA, approved shelf-safe canning method. Your kitchen, your research, your recipe, your rules.

I think Olive Garden makes the best Minestrone Soup. But soup is one of those things I have a really hard time paying for.

I don’t mind paying for things I don’t care to make myself, like Bibimbap. We have a little local Korean Grill place nearby that is amazing. She was a chef in South Korea for years, and has been running her amazing restaurant here for nearly a decade. It’s probably considered a hole-in-the-wall because of the size, but I have no issue spending nearly $40 for a phenomenal meal for us on the rare dates we don’t have at home.

$40?! For two people? I thought you guys were frugal?!

We are. We’re just not cheap.

This meal, you guys, is completely made in-house. All of those vegetables prepared in tiny diced, slices, Korean style, on top of the several appetizers that accompany the dish… that’s a lot of work I’m happy to pay someone very skilled to do on our behalf! And to boot, the meal portion is double, so there’s plenty for lunch the next day. So how’s that for a $20 date meal for two? : )

Anyway… soup! Soup is not Korean vegetable prep-level hard. At all. And it’s mostly water or broth anyway. So many recipes, like soup, work in a crock pot because you can (thankfully!) dump ingredients in, and walk away!

A carry-out order of OG’s soup is over $6, and it says it serves two. I bet we can do way better than that. Let’s do some food math.

For a dollar a serving, I’m in! Talk about easy lunches!

You’ll note above I said ‘frozen with peppers’ for the onions. This made the soup more expensive, but saved me some time. It’s a convenience tax, but I was willing to pay for it this time. I was also reluctant to use our own garden onions, because we have so few, and eat so many. (But I just planted dozens more scallions and bunch onions for our fall garden, so we’re excited!)

We’ve had tons of zucchini on the counter. It seems like there’s been 15 zuc sitting there, whether I made dessert out of it, a dozen loaves of zucchini bread, zucchini relish, or 19 jars of “canned” zucchini bread. We can’t keep up with it! So today, I’m dehydrating zucchini for soups this winter. And since I’m running to the store in a bit, I’ll grab some celery and onion to dehydrate as well. I referenced this recipe for inspiration.

How we prepped our “canned” soup

Instead of dehydrating garlic, I used garlic powder on the zucchini to season as I filled the dehydrator trays, and added more to the soup base once I “canned” the soup mix. I filled three trays, totaling about six cups of zucchini, that dehydrated down to two cups of sliced zucchini soup-sized pieces. I picked up three bags of 12 oz. “recipe starter” frozen diced onion and mixed bell pepper, for $1.50 each. (I’m only including one bag in the recipe, but I wanted to maximize having the dehydrator running by doing multiple trays for the zucchini and pepper/onion mix.) Those dehydrated to 2.5 cups. The tray of celery yielded a half cup after dehydration. We set the temp to 135 degrees, and it probably took close to 18 hours total to dehydrate all the trays. You want a good ‘clink’ if you drop a piece on a hard surface or in your mason jar.

We add the pasta last if we can the mix in quart jars, so we can scoop it out and set aside to cook at the very end. This prevents soggy noodles (especially helpful if using gluten-free varieties). I prefer to “can” these in pint jars, without the pasta. We always have pasta on hand (thanks deep pantry!), and it fills the pint jar nicely, instead of leaving quart jars with a large empty space.

Leave the diced tomatoes, northern beans, kidney beans, and vegetable stock in their containers. You’ll add those once you cook up your meal. Much less prep work! I made this tag so I don’t forget to add these ingredients on Minestrone soup day.

Minestrone Soup Adds

So I don’t forget anything when dumping into the crockpot!

A “canned” minestrone soup

Ingredients:

1/3 cup dried zucchini

2/3 cup dried pepper/onion mix

2 tablespoons dried celery

1 tablespoon Italian herb seasoning (a blend of oregano, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, and basil)

1/2 tablespoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon black pepper

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup pasta on top (or left out if using pint jar like we do)

What we did:

We sterilized our three pint jars (you’ll want to use quart if you’re including pasta in your mix) to make three “canned” minestrone soups. We placed the pints on a cookie sheet so as not to have the jars directly on the oven rack, and sterilized by baking at 225 degrees for 10 minutes. (You’ll see other items in the background; since I had the oven cranked, I oven canned a few extra dry goods for long-term storage.)

After removing the hot, sterilized jars from the oven, we added the seasonings first, and then the dried ingredients layered on top. I prefer the seasonings on the bottom so I can see them. They mix in and hide among the dried ingredients with a good shake! Just remember to keep 1/2” head room however you fill your jars for oven canning.

To start “canning,'“ we popped the filled jars in the oven for an hour, set to 200 degrees.

Once the hour was up, we wiped the rims with vinegar, placed the sterile lid and ring on, screwed on tightly, and placed back in the oven for an additional 30 minutes.

Once done, we set on a towel on the counter to cool, and waited for the ever-so-satisfying ting! of the sealed vacuum lid. After the jars cooled and the lids set, we removed the rings to store.

Store without the rings to ensure a good seal

If you adjust the seasoning, remember you’ll be adding all that broth and water and beans and tomatoes later. We think of this seasoning as a ‘starter’ but will probably add cayenne pepper and basil once the crock pot is rocking and we can smell the delicious, bubbling soup!

A bit of prep? Sure! Worth it for garden zucchini this winter in our minestrone? Heck yes! And I’m grateful not to have to chuck another languishing zucchini off the counter, out for the chickens to eat instead. It’s a very easy thing to make, it just takes a bit of time and counter space to process, but at least you get some of your counter back from all that zucchini!