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Pasta e Fagioli Recipe
Pasta e fagioli is a hearty Italian soup made with pasta, beans, tomatoes, vegetables, and plenty of savoury flavour. It’s simple, comforting food made from everyday ingredients, which is exactly why I love it so much. Thick enough to feel like a proper meal but still wonderfully cosy and warming, this is the kind of recipe that works just as well for an easy weeknight dinner as it does for a lazy weekend lunch with plenty of parmesan scattered over the top.
Pasta e Fagioli
A big pot of Pasta e Fagioli is one of my favourite ways to turn simple pantry staples into something deeply comforting. Tender pasta, creamy beans, vegetables, and a rich tomato broth come together to create a soup that’s hearty enough to be a meal in its own right. It’s rustic Italian comfort food at its best, perfect for chilly evenings or whenever life feels a little hectic. Filling, nourishing, and wonderfully budget-friendly, this is the kind of recipe I come back to again and again.
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 onion, finely diced
- 2 carrots, finely diced
- 2 stick celery, finely diced
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 sprig rosemary
- 1 sprig thyme
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 x 400g tin borlotti beans, drained and rinsed
- 400g tin diced tomatoes
- 5 cups hot chicken stock
- 125ml dry white wine
- 125g small pasta such as anellini or ditelini
- Sea salt flakes and pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onion, carrots, and celery and stir for 10 minutes, or until the onion has started to soften. Next, add the garlic and stir through for about one minute.
- Add the white wine and increase the heat slightly. Cook for 4-5 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until the wine has reduced and the harsh alcohol smell has disappeared.
- Next, add the tomatoes, borlotti beans, herbs, and stock to the pot. Stir through, increase the heat to high, and bring to a boil.
- Once boiling, reduce to a low simmer, cover, and cook for 30 minutes.
- Remove the bay leaf, rosemary and thyme.
- Transfer half of the soup to a heatproof blender or food processor and allow to cool for a minute before blitzing until smooth and creamy. Return to the pot and stir through. Alternatively, use a stick blender directly in the pot. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
- Return the soup to a boil and add the pasta. Stir regularly to prevent sticking and cook according to packet instructions, or until the pasta is al dente.
- Ladle into bowls and serve with crusty bread and a sprinkle of Parmesan.
Notes
- Pasta e Fagioli is a classic Italian peasant dish that translates to pasta and beans. It's hearty, deeply flavourful, and one of those recipes that tastes like it's been simmering all day.
- I use this large heavy-based pot for soups and stews. It distributes heat evenly and is big enough to hold everything without the soup bubbling over.
- The soffritto (onion, carrot, and celery) is the flavour base of this soup. Take your time with it and don't rush the 10 minutes of cooking. It makes all the difference.
- Blending half the soup gives you that gorgeous thick, creamy consistency while still keeping some texture from the whole beans and vegetables.
- If using a regular blender rather than a stick blender, let the soup cool for a couple of minutes first and don't fill the blender more than halfway. Hot liquid expands and can cause the lid to blow off.
- Small pasta shapes like anellini, ditalini, or macaroni work best here. They're the right size for scooping up with a spoon and cook evenly in the thick soup.
- Cook the pasta directly in the soup rather than separately. It absorbs all that beautiful flavour and helps thicken the broth further.
- The soup will thicken considerably as it sits. If reheating leftovers, add a splash of stock or water to loosen it up.
- White wine adds depth and acidity. If you'd prefer not to use it, just add an extra 125ml of stock instead.
- Leftovers can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 days. The pasta will continue to absorb liquid, so add a splash of stock when reheating.
- This soup freezes well without the pasta. Make the soup base, freeze in portions, and cook fresh pasta when reheating. Freeze for up to 3 months.
What I Cook With
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Nutrition Information:
Yield:
4Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 379Total Fat: 9gSaturated Fat: 2gUnsaturated Fat: 7gCholesterol: 9mgSodium: 1021mgCarbohydrates: 58gFiber: 9gSugar: 20gProtein: 17g
Please note, this nutrition information is to be used as a guide only. Nutrition information isn’t always accurate.
Serve this with
- Serve with garlic bread for dunking into the tomato-rich broth. It’s especially good once the bread has soaked up the beans, pasta and all those lovely savoury flavours.
- Pair with my Simple Rocket and Parmesan Salad for something fresh alongside the hearty soup. The peppery leaves and sharp Parmesan balance the beans and pasta beautifully.
- Add a plate of roasted Mediterranean vegetables on the side if you want a bigger meal. Courgette, capsicum and aubergine all work well without competing with the rustic soup.
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Inspired by Nigella, As It So Often Is
You would not believe how long I’ve been making this soup. Inspired by Nigella Lawson, specifically from Nigella Bites, because of course it is, Pasta e Fagioli has been a staple in my kitchen for longer than I care to calculate. It’s the kind of dish that wraps around you like a woollen blanket, and on a grey, rainy Brisbane day, that’s not a metaphor, it’s a genuine physical experience. Rich, comforting, and deeply satisfying in a way that more technically complex recipes rarely manage to be.
I should note upfront that I’m actually intolerant to beans. Not severely, but enough that eating this soup comes with consequences. On the days my body says yes though, you can absolutely bet I’m making it anyway. Some recipes are worth the pain, and this is one of them. I say this not to encourage reckless bean consumption, but to give you a sense of just how good it is. Suffering has been involved and I have no regrets.
The first time I made this, I was in Brisbane a long time ago, and I had a friend named Alexandra who was, for a stretch of time, one of those deeply wonderful food-obsessed people you’re lucky to find. She’d send recipes by text, ring just to debate whether garlic should go in before or after the onions, and she was the person who inspired my very first food blog, nearly fifteen years ago now. We bonded over food and Nigella endlessly. Life pulled us apart eventually, our values didn’t align even if our recipes did, and the friendship didn’t survive. I miss her sometimes, especially when I make this soup. Food like Pasta e Fagioli stirs up more than flavour. It unearths memories, people, entire eras of who you used to be.
Bot Attacks, Brisbane, and a Decision Long Overdue
I know I promised regular updates, and I’ve had every intention, but the past few months have thrown up some fairly significant setbacks. The blog has been hit by bot attacks, deliberate ones, and bot attacks signal to Google that a site can’t be trusted, which sends traffic plummeting and, honestly, sends my soul right along with it. I know who is behind the attacks, and that’s all I’ll say about that. But it’s been demoralising in a way that’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t spent years building something from nothing.
In the middle of all of that, my mum and I have been having some honest conversations, and we’ve made a decision: I’m moving home to Sydney next year. I know I’ve mentioned before that Brisbane has never quite been my vibe, and although I genuinely love my flat here, the city has never felt like mine. You can take the girl out of Sydney, but you absolutely cannot take Sydney out of the girl. Since making the decision, I have felt the most calm and at peace that I have in a very long time. It’s the kind of clarity that comes from finally stopping the fight against something you’ve known all along.
I still love Adelaide terribly, and I miss my best friend there more than I talk about. Adelaide is the retirement plan at this point, though as an elder millennial I’m increasingly unsure whether retirement is something that will actually happen for our generation. For now, Sydney is the next chapter, and it feels right in my bones.
A Soup for Rainy Days and Honest Seasons
The weather in Brisbane has been deeply untypical lately, lots of rain, grey skies, the kind of damp that makes you want to stand over a pot of something warm and just stay there. Which is exactly how this soup got made this week. Pasta e Fagioli is not a summer recipe, it’s not a bright, fresh, sunny plate kind of food. It’s a soup for days when the sky is doing something moody and you need something that will actually warm you from the inside.
In other news, I’ve launched a podcast. It’s called Chaos, Crumbs and Clarity, and it lives primarily over on my personal blog where I talk about dating, neurodiversity, being a pre-perimenopausal elder millennial with a demonic cat, and whatever else is taking up space in my head at any given moment. If that sounds like your kind of thing, come and find it. Lulu, for the record, has no idea he’s been branded demonic. He remains entirely self-satisfied about his place in the world.
This soup is simple, deeply nourishing, and exactly what a grey Brisbane week calls for. I ate the whole pot over two days and I was in bean-related pain for most of it and I would do it again immediately. That’s the review. Make it.
Ingredient breakdown
Olive oil
The base of the soffritto, which is the flavour foundation the whole soup is built on. Everything starts here, low and slow, with the vegetables cooking gently in the oil until they’re soft and sweet and deeply fragrant. Don’t rush this stage because a properly cooked soffritto makes a noticeable difference to the depth of the finished soup.
Onion, carrot, and celery
The classic Italian soffritto trio, finely diced so they cook down into the soup and become part of the broth rather than distinct chunky vegetables sitting in it. All three go in together at the start and need a proper unhurried cook until they’re completely soft and starting to turn golden at the edges. This is where the flavour of the soup is built, before any liquid goes in at all.
Garlic
Two cloves of minced garlic added after the soffritto has softened, cooked for just long enough to turn fragrant without browning. It adds a savoury depth that runs through the whole soup and works with the dried herbs to give pasta e fagioli its distinctly Italian character.
Dried rosemary, thyme, and sage
The three herbs go in together and form the aromatic backbone of the soup alongside the garlic. Dried herbs work well here because this is a long-simmered soup and they have time to rehydrate and bloom into the broth properly. Sage in particular is a classic pairing with borlotti beans and gives the soup a warmth and earthiness that makes it taste genuinely traditional rather than just a bean and pasta situation.
Bay leaf
Goes in with the liquid and comes out before serving. It adds a quiet, slightly floral background note that you wouldn’t identify by name but would notice if it wasn’t there. Same principle as every other slow-cooked dish in this collection.
Borlotti beans
The heart of the dish and what makes pasta e fagioli the deeply satisfying, substantial soup that it is. Borlotti beans have a creamy, slightly nutty flavour and a softer texture than cannellini that suits the rusticity of this soup really well. Tinned borlotti beans, drained and rinsed, are completely fine here. For a thicker, creamier broth, mash or blitz a portion of the beans before adding them to the pot, which thickens the soup naturally without any additional starch. The beans that stay whole give you texture while the mashed portion gives you body.
Diced tomatoes
A tin of diced tomatoes adds acidity, colour, and a tomato depth that underpins the broth without making the soup taste like a tomato sauce. They break down during the simmer and become indistinguishable in the finished soup, which is exactly what you want. They’re providing structure and liquid rather than being a distinct presence in the bowl.
Chicken stock
Four cups of hot chicken stock forms the bulk of the broth and provides the savoury, rounded depth that the soup needs to taste complete rather than watery. A good quality stock makes a real difference here because it’s the primary liquid and its flavour carries through everything. Vegetable stock works as a substitute if you want to keep this vegetarian.
Dry white wine
Added with the stock and simmers down into the broth, adding an acidity and complexity that chicken stock alone doesn’t provide. Use something you’d actually drink rather than the cheapest bottle you can find, because the flavour concentrates as it cooks and a harsh wine will make the soup taste sharp rather than rounded.
Small pasta
Anellini, ditalini, or any other small pasta shape that fits on a spoon. The pasta goes in towards the end of cooking and finishes directly in the broth, which means it absorbs the flavour of the soup as it cooks and thickens the broth slightly with its starch. Watch the timing carefully because small pasta cooks quickly and overcooked, bloated pasta in a soup is a sad thing. If you’re making this ahead, cook the pasta separately and add it when serving so it doesn’t continue absorbing liquid in the fridge overnight.
Maldon sea salt flakes and pepper
Season at the end rather than throughout because the stock reduces as it simmers and can become saltier than expected. Taste carefully before adding anything and adjust from there.
