Welcome to fall, everyone! It came in quickly this past weekend here in the northeast with some chilly temperatures right out of the gate. Quite a change from the past few weeks, where when it wasn’t raining it was super hot. I’m not a fan of cold, or even cool, weather, so I’m not looking forward to the next few months.
To ring in the new season on Saturday I attended the first annual Harvest VegFest in my hometown of York, Pennsylvania. Never in a million years would I have imagined a celebration of the vegan lifestyle there, but it makes me super happy that the town, which has always been home to a lot of farmers from the dairy and meat industries, has opened up to these new ideas about food. There’s also an animal rights organization located there now called Animal Advocates of South-Central PA, which promotes the ethical and compassionate treatment of animals. And at the VegFest I met several people from sanctuaries in the area who are working to rescue and rehabilitate animals of all kinds. I was blown away that this was where I grew up!
The VegFest event was filled with amazing vendors offering up everything to kombucha to skin care products to meditation practices. And of course there was amazing food from local vegan eateries. The turnout was certainly amazing, and it’s only the event’s first year. I can’t wait to see how well it does next year
OK, let’s move on to this week’s recipe. It’s a really simple but really hearty minestrone soup, made in the instant pot. If you saw my Instant Pot Stuffed Pepper Soup recipe you surely know that I’m in love with this new toy of mine. It makes cooking super easy and it’s really versatile. I’ve only posted these two recipes for soup so far, but I’m working on wide variety of foods for down the road. I’m convinced I can make anything in this instant pot…
The ingredients in this recipe are fairly basic, but the beauty of a minestrone is that it’s essentially a hodge-podge, so you can put just about anything in it and it’ll turn out really well. I tried to keep it healthy and in season with things like kale, tomatoes and chickpeas. But add or subtract whatever you’d like and let me know how it goes in the comments below. My guess is that it’s going to be awesome. And also, if you don’t have an instant pot this will work well in a Dutch oven or soup pot, too. I’ll add directions for that in the recipe notes.
Lastly, I’m heading on a two-week trip across the pond this week, starting in London and ending in Ireland. So if you have any vegan food recommendations for those places—or any recs in general—let me know!
Instant Pot Minestrone
Ingredients
- 1 onion chopped
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 2 carrots sliced
- 2 stalks celery sliced
- 1 can 15 oz. chickpeas, drained
- 1 can 28 oz. fire-roasted, diced tomatoes
- 2 cups kale massaged and chopped
- 1 carton 32 oz. low sodium vegetable broth
- 1 Tbsp. oregano
- 1 Tbsp. basil
- 1 Tbsp. rosemary
- ½ tsp. salt
- ½ tsp. pepper
Instructions
- Select “Soup” setting on instant pot. Add all ingredients and cook for 10 minutes. (For stovetop directions, see below.)
Notes
Nutrition
what would you recommend to add if I wanted to spice this up a little bit?
Hi, Bryan. An easy route would be to add maybe half a teaspoon of red pepper flakes to the ingredients list. If you want a little deeper heat, maybe a teaspoon of adobo sauce (this will also make it a little smoky, which is nice) or chop and seed a jalapeno and add it in before cooking. A few dabs of hot sauce on top is quick and good, too 🙂