Pasta e Fagioli Recipe

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Hello guys!! It has been a few since I’ve been on here and I can honestly say that I have missed it. Sometimes life gets in the way and you just have to go with the flow and wait it out. But I am back and ready to hit this year running full steam ahead. I do hope that at the time of this writing you are doing well.

How many of you have a favorite chain restaurant? I will not mention names, but most of you will be able to figure out which one of mine was. For years my family and I would go to this Italian restaurant, for birthday parties or after church on Sundays or just for a quick lunch when in the area. They always had the best soup and salad lunch specials.

But then the Food Network came out and we all jumped on the bandwagon of eating more local foods. Which I love by the way because I am a big supporter of local, small businesses/restaurants. So over the years, my love for this particular eatery has waned. But my love for the Pasta e Fagioli has not! I am still a fan, especially on a cold, wintery night.

So the search for the best recipe began. Pinterest is always a good place to find recipes. On a side note, I have so many saved to try and cannot wait to share some of the outcomes with you. With the help of my mom, we created our own spin on this great Italian soup.

What is Pasta e Fagioli, you might ask? It is an Italian soup that means “pasta and beans”. In its beginnings, it was a peasant dish made with the cheapest ingredients. As the years went by, people made it in different ways as the only requirement is pasta and beans. Normally it is made with a white bean, like a Cannellini or Great Northern bean and a small pasta, like Ditalini. From there the possibilities are endless. Many of the recipes you find use carrots and celery, but I am not a lover of these two in mine. Which brings me to one of the things that I love about recipes is that you can tweak them to your flavor palette. Following I will share mine and my mom’s favorite variant.

Ingredients:

• 1lb of ground beef or turkey
• half of an onion, diced (can use 2 tsp dried onion)
• 2-3 garlic cloves, chopped (can use 1tsp garlic salt)
• 15 oz. can tomato sauce
• 14.5 oz. can petite diced tomatoes
• 28 oz crushed tomatoes (I used tomatoes we canned last year from our garden)
• 1 c beef broth
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 tsp Oregano
• 2 tsp Italian seasoning
• olive oil
• 16 oz pkg Ditalini or Elbow pasta, cooked according to the box and drained
• Shredded cheese

In a pot of your choosing, it will need to be a medium soup pot, over medium heat, add a little olive oil and brown you meet with the onions and garlic. Once the meat is done and the onions are translucent, turn the heat to low.

Now add all tomatoes, starting with the sauce. Depending upon how thick or thin you want, you can now add the beef broth. Just add a little at the time till the desired consistency. If after one cup of broth, you want it a little thinner, add a tad of water. Add the salt, pepper, and seasoning. Let all simmer together over low heat for about 45 mins. Keep a check and lightly stir.

Once all of the flavors have melded together and your pasta is cooked and drained, you can now enjoy the fruits of your labor. Some choose to put the pasta in the soup, I like to keep them separate till serving. Put a couple of spoons of pasta in your bowl and top with a couple of ladles of soup. Sprinkle with cheese and dig in!! You can also serve this dish with crackers or a type of garlic bread.

I love getting to share recipes with you and hope that you will give them a try. We all like different flavors but that is the really amazing thing about food, is in our divisive world, it actually brings us together.

Please feel free to leave us a comment about some of your favorite foods and who knows…we may share it on here for others to try too.

Happy Eating!!! Amanda