Pasta Fagioli Recipe

A Pasta Fagioli Recipe
Old World Style

This Pasta Fagioli recipe brings the flavors of Italy to your heart and your belly with every bite. So easy to make, this Italian soup recipe is your passport to Italy Old World style.

Some slang terms for this soup is pasta fazool or pastafazu and probably came from the Southern Italian dialect of pasta vazu. Either way you say it to me it sounds like delicious pasta soup. My recipe is probably more brothy then most but that's the way I like it. Traditionally this soup is served like a stew though.

Most Southern Italian food recipes required using what they had available to them to make something fresh and delicious and able to feed a large family. In other words they took what they had and made it go far like the Pasta Fagioli recipe. It is really a peasants soup.

It's so easy to make!

Fagioli means Beans in Italian and is the most important ingredient in this soup recipe. So make sure to use a good quality bean.

My favorite canned bean to use is straight from the bean people, Bush's Beans cannelli beans. They are soft, tender and the juicy is creamy and full of flavor.

Ingredients:

1 Can Bushes Canned Cannelli beans.
Homemade chicken stock I fill the empty bean can twice and add to the soup.
1/2 pound of Gemelli or Rotini pasta
2 handfuls of fresh spinach
1/2 chopped onion
2 cloves garlic sliced thin
1/4 pound of panchetta cut in small slices.
Olive Oil
pinch fresh chopped parsley
Pinch of crushed red pepper.

Parmigiano to serve the soup with.

Preparation:

Boil water and a healthy pinch of salt and cook the Gemelli or Rotini pasta. Don't cook it al dente as it will expand in the soup and absorb all the broth.

In a sauce pan saute the panchetta on a low-medium heat until almost crispy but still tender.
Now add some Olive Oil to the pan and start to saute the onions and garlic also on med/low heat until translucent.

Take the cans of cannelli beans and empty them into a pot along with the juice in the can.
Add your chicken broth, the sauted onions, a splash of Olive Oil and bring to a boil.

Now add your fully cooked Rotini or Gemelli pasta to the soup.
I like to add the spinach directly to the pot but add it last last so it keeps that bright green color.

If you like a little heat to your pasta fagioli recipe pinch some crushed red pepper and then a pinch of parsley.
Serve it hot with parmigiano on the side.