Minestrone with Rice and Beans: Minestrone di Riso e Fagioli

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This recipe is phenomenal as are any of Mario Batali's! I happened to replace the dried beans (no time for that! with canned white kidney beans, and I added chopped kale. Instead of the aborio (rissotto rice I used pearled barley which was so delicious as well as healthy. Thank you Mario -- we miss seeing you so much on Iron Chef.

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I made this twice and did notice it came out thicker than a a soup. It's easy to correct that with a bit of broth. It's robust and filling. I even mad the last meatless and it's filling and tasty.

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Substituted canned cannellini beans for the borlotti beans. Other than that, followed the recipe. Used my own homemade brown chicken stock. I used carnarolli instead of arborio - there's a debate over which of them is better as a "risotto" rice anyways.

DH called it the best minestrone he'd ever had - pretty good for someone born and raised in Bologna, Italia. I was really impressed at just how delicious and filling it was without being excessive. I loved the flavors.

It really matters that you use good ingredients. Italian sausage you know you like, good stock, and real Italian rice.

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You know it's going to be bad when the first ingredient is something no one outside of Italy can get. Mario's recipes may be authentic, but sometimes authentic doesn't mean "good". Nice try on the previous folks to try and fix it, but this is not fixable.

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only need either quarter cup or half cup rice. recipe called for too much, turned soup into sludge. cabbage not good-absorbed all the liquid.

flavor very bland and tasteless.

good ingredients but not a good recipe

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this should be called cabbage and rice stew. i used canned bortolli beans (cranberry, brown beans and fresh italian sausage which i had to brown before i sliced so those were my only two divesions from the recipe but after 45 minutes of simmering there was absolutely no broth left. you could practically cut it with a knife. so i added some water, turned off the heat and seasoned with salt and pepper because it was basically tasteless.

things i would do different:

more sausage. i used one large butcher-shop freshly made italian pork sausage and it was a 1/3 of a pound but the recipe only calls for 1/8. cut into half moons there is very little sausage given the volume of the stew.

less rice. the arborio rice was on steroids and even after the heat was off expanded even further soaking up all available liquid. i'd start with 1/4 cup of dry rice next time.

less cabbage. i used half of a large cabbage and that was still too much.

more seasoning. the soup, in the end, was incredibly bland. more sausage might add to the flavor but i will experiment with some herbs next time.

more tomatoes. i used only the meat of the tomatoes from a 14 oz. can of san marzano peeled plum tomatoes, which was about four small tomatoes, i didn't use the liquid because the recipe didn't say to. but i would use a few more because although they are not a main ingredient in the soup, they got lost in the volume, much like the sausage.

also, the recipe calls for butter but the directions speak about oil for the saute/sweat of the aromatics. i used 1/2 olive oil and 1/2 unsalted butter.

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This is a easy recipe to make and delicious to eat. I would recommend it to anyone.

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This soup is very tasty and EASY to make. My family is a big soup eater and this one was a hit.