Lisa’s Pasta Free Minestrone Soup

I’m not sure there’s a more homely smell than soup cooking on the stove. This is my definition of comfort food and living in Brisbane, it’s rather late in the year to be enjoying soup – but ENJOY I AM!

I’ve added pearl barley to this soup, instead of the traditional pasta – which makes it wheat free – a great bonus when you are looking to cut down on wheat.

You can replace the sliced bacon with a bacon hock and remove it when cooking is over, but for ease of ingredients – I used actual bacon in the recipe below. A nitrate-free bacon from free range pigs. It is heavenly. You don’t need much for a lot of flavour.

With the chopped veggies – chop them pretty small – about the size of your thumbnail – or slightly bigger. We want chunky but not huge chunks!

I froze half of this and have been eating it for lunch all week. The recipe makes a lot! Gee I love batch cooking.

The barley soaks up a lot of moisture so if you feel you’d like to add more liquid when you’re reheating then go for it.

Sometimes real food can be so crazy simple and delicious. And the taste and health benefits of this soup are far outweighed by the time it takes to do a little chopping and simmering.

Give it a go x

Pasta Free Minestrone Soup Recipe

Here’s what you need:

Three slices of the best bacon you can find and afford (naturally smoked adds an AMAZING flavour to this soup)
1 sliced onion
2 chopped garlic cloves
3 chopped carrots
3 chopped zucchinis
3 chopped potatoes
300g chopped green beans
2 tins chopped tomatoes
1 cup passata
1 litre chicken broth/stock
1.5 – 2 litres water
Dash of tamari
3 bay leaves
1 heaped tsp Italian herbs

Here’s What you do:

Cook bacon, onion and garlic in 2 tbls olive oil over a medium heat for 3-5 minutes in a very large sauce pan.

Then add all other ingredients.

Bring to boil them simmer for 1.5 hours

Add 1 cup of pearl barley and continue cooking for half an hour until soft.

Enjoy x