Instant Pot Vegetable Soup

Last week of February. My birthday is March 3rd — I will be twenty-four. I am trying to think about what twenty-four feels like as a destination. At twenty-one I turned twenty-two alone in a dorm room with a lemon cake. At twenty-two I was in Oak Lawn, between graduation and the job. At twenty-three I was three months into the teaching job, just starting to believe I could do it. At twenty-four I will be seven months into my second semester, with twenty-four students served across the year, with twenty thousand blog readers, with a recipe notebook that is fifty-three pages.

Patty called at 7:15 and I told her to expect a birthday request. She said "Chicken and dumplings or ziti?" I said chicken and dumplings, please. She said "I'll have the chicken out." She already had the chicken out. She already knew.

Made a winter minestrone this week — the heavy January version, with canned tomatoes and dried pasta and white beans and kale from the Jewel on sale. I added a parmesan rind and let it simmer for an hour. Under three dollars for a pot that lasted four days. This is the recipe that got me through the NIU winter of 2016 and is getting me through the Pilsen winter of 2019. Some recipes are not just food. They are load-bearing walls. This soup is a load-bearing wall.

I am almost twenty-four. I have a classroom and a kitchen and a bike I got from the Goodwill on 18th Street last spring and a neighbor who brings me dried chiles and a cast iron that has cooked everything I have cooked in Pilsen. I am going to be twenty-four and that is going to be different from being twenty-three and different from being twenty-two in the dorm room alone. Every year is different. The lemon zest in the cake is the same. The birthday is the same. I am not.

This is the soup I mentioned — the one from 2016 that became the one from 2019. I’ve adapted it slightly over the years, and an Instant Pot now does what an hour of stovetop simmering used to do, but the bones are the same: canned tomatoes, white beans, whatever sturdy green is on sale, a parmesan rind if you have one, dried pasta to make it a meal. If you’re heading into a cold stretch of months and need something that will last four days and cost almost nothing, this is the recipe. It was built for exactly that.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Total Time: 40 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium carrots, sliced into coins
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, with juices
1 can (15 oz) white beans (cannellini or Great Northern), drained and rinsed
4 cups vegetable broth (or chicken broth)
2 cups water
1 parmesan rind (optional, but recommended)
1 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 cup small dried pasta (ditalini, elbow, or small shells)
2 cups chopped kale or spinach, stems removed
Grated parmesan, for serving

Instructions

Sauté the aromatics. Set the Instant Pot to Sauté mode. Add the olive oil and heat until shimmering. Add the onion and cook 3–4 minutes until softened. Add the garlic, carrots, and celery and cook another 2 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add liquids and seasonings. Pour in the diced tomatoes, white beans, broth, and water. Add the parmesan rind if using, Italian seasoning, thyme, salt, and pepper. Stir to combine.
Pressure cook. Secure the lid and set the valve to Sealing. Cook on High Pressure for 8 minutes. When the timer finishes, carefully do a quick release.
Add the pasta and greens. Remove the lid and switch back to Sauté mode. Stir in the dried pasta and cook 8–10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the pasta is just tender. Remove and discard the parmesan rind.
Finish with greens. Stir in the chopped kale and cook 2 minutes until wilted. Taste and adjust salt and pepper as needed.
Serve. Ladle into bowls and top with freshly grated parmesan. The soup thickens as it sits — add a splash of broth when reheating leftovers.

Nutrition (per serving)

Instant Pot Vegetable Soup — The Load-Bearing Wall Recipe