"Minestrone" Soup

The sarcasm quotes in the title are because this is more of a minestrone inspired soup. It doesn't have the trademark pasta or beans, and I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but it was pretty delicious, if I do say so myself.

I made mine in my pressure cooker. You can make it on the stove or in the slow cooker as well, although I find the pressure cooker is better at preserving the delicate taste of foods and needs less salt.

I made it with whatever vegetables I had on hand (I happen to have a lot of cabbage, for example), so that's what I list in the ingredients, but go mad with whatever you have or whatever you love. The carrot isn't as low carb as the rest of the veggies (Real Meal orange list) but so little of it spread across so much soup is still well below the carb limit.

I had this with a side of cloud bread (aka oopsies) but I am still trying to decide whether or not I liked them enough to post a recipe.

Low carb minestrone style soup

Makes 8-10 servings

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp oil
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 500g bacon, chopped (I used streaky bacon)
• 1 large or 2 small baby marrows (chopped)
• 2 large carrots (chopped)
• 3 small leeks (sliced) - you could use celery
• 1 green pepper (chopped)
• 1/4 cabbage (shredded)
• 1 large handful of green beans (chopped)
• 1 tin chopped tomatoes
• 1 - 2 cups chicken stock (I used 60ml concentrated chicken stock and enough boiling water to cover the veggies)
• salt and pepper

Method

1. Chop all your veggies. This is the labour intensive part of the recipe (or food processor FTW).
2. Heat the oil and butter in the body of the pressure cooker or a heavy bottomed, large saucepan or pot
3. Fry the onion and bacon until the onion is translucent and the bacon starts to brown
4. Add the other ingredients
5. Cook until all the veggies are soft (carrots are a good test) - in my electric pressure cooker, this took 40 minutes
6. Taste for salt and pepper, and season if necessary

Nutritional values

(per serving, assuming 8 servings; calculated with My Fitness Pal)
Total Fat: 20g; Total Carbohydrates: 11g; Dietary Fiber 3g; Nett Carbs: 8g; Protein: 12g