This is a soup with a story. It’s essentially a minestrone, so you might think that our tale is going to start in Italy, with a grandmother tending a simmering pot for hours—and you’d be partly right. Except that this story is about my good friend’s great-grandparents, and the pot was simmering on a stove in a bar in Sacramento, California.
Now, Sacramento has a long history as a drinking town. So from the first days of the California Gold Rush, to the speakeasies of prohibition, to—I can only imagine—the indulgences of today’s state government bigwigs, there has been a steady stream of drinking establishment clients in need of a little something to help them sober up.
Our story, this soup’s story, takes place in the respectable post-prohibition era. So it’s the 1930’s, maybe, and later the 1940’s. The bar is remembered in family lore only as “The Joint,” which may or may not have been its name. It resided within what was, at the time, the oldest standing building in Sacramento. A watering trough waited outside the door for customers arriving by horse and buggy. And my friend’s great-grandparents, the proprietors, always kept a pot of this minestrone soup behind the bar. 
The recipe, needless to say, has been passed down through the generations.
I can’t attest to the soup’s sobering effects, mainly because on the now-rare occasions when I’m in need of sobering up I rarely have the good sense to eat a healthy bowl of homemade soup. But I can promise you that it’s hearty and warming and just the ticket even when you start out sober. And it’s the easiest way I know to make dinner for 16 in one pot. If you don’t have an enormous pot, you may want to scale down the recipe.
A Great Big Pot of Great-Grandma’s Minestrone: In your biggest soup pot, saute 2 chopped onions in olive oil (the original recipe calls for 1/2 c.; I use 2-3 Tbsp.) with a few chopped cloves of garlic. Add 3 c. chopped carrots, 4 chopped celery stalks, 4 c. shredded cabbage, 4 c. chopped spinach, and 2 Tbsp. each chopped fresh parsley and sage (or substitute 2 tsp. dried of either or both). Saute the vegetables until they begin to soften. Add 2 large cans of tomatoes, 1 c. rice, 1 c. sorted and rinsed kidney beans (or 1 can), and 4 quarts soup broth. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for about an hour and a half, until the beans are tender and creamy. Serve topped with grated Parmesan.
Note: Yes, of course you can substitute arugula for the spinach and kale for the cabbage. And add winter squash. And use brown rice or wheat berries or whatever beans you have handy. Of course.
Some Other Favorite Soups:
Carrot Top Soup
Red Lentil Corn Chowder
Cauliflower and Cheddar Soup
Emmy Cooks 
That looks like great minestrone
This sounds great! Thank you for the post. I will have to try and make this soon.
our co-op was serving a minestrone-ish soup yesterday with goat cheese in it and it was so savory smelling and making my stomach rumble as I shopped that I vowed to make some–and then here is your post!
It’s definitely soup weather here in Chicago. Great recipe Emmy! I cherish my family recipes too.
Awesome! A great story and a perfect pot of soup! I adore minestrone and think I’ll give this a try Emmy… I can’t pass up a recipe that has come through generations, you know? ;)
Now I have images of an amazing gold rush bar full of cowboys with bowls of minestrone beside their hands of marked cards–ha! Minestrone is one of my favorite soups ever–I’m so glad it’s cool enough to simmer a huge pot of it all afternoon!
This looks really yummy. When you say “sorted and rinsed kidney beans”, do you mean dried kidney beans will work without being pre-cooked or soaked?
Yes, that’s just what I mean. Isn’t it liberating?
I made this tonight, and it was great! And just rinsing the beans and tossing them in worked like a charm. Thanks for demystifying dried beans for me.
I’m glad you liked the soup! It’s one of my winter staples. And it’s one of the well-kept secrets of beans that you don’t really have to cook them any particular way. The rinse-and-toss method works as well as any other, in my experience. (More on things you don’t have to do when cooking beans here: https://emmycooks.com/2012/03/01/how-to-cook-black-beans/.) :)
Yum!
Delicious :). I love minestrone.
YUM!!! I want a big honkin’ bowl of that right now.
Sounds wonderful!
(No similar soup traditions in my family… in fact I’m embarrassed to say that whenever I see minestrone on a menu, I always have to ask– wait, is that vegetarian? I’ve had it so rarely, I can never remember what’s in it… but I see the perfect solution to that now– I should try making yours!)