This vibrant and flavoursome pea and ham minestrone is the perfect lunch and makes a great midweek meal option too.
It won't break the bank either, costing £1.22 per portion and includes lots of delicious and filling ingredients like onion, celery, ham, pasta, spring greens, frozen peas, lemon, basil and finely grated Parmesan.
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Yields:
4 serving(s)
Prep Time:
20 mins
Cook Time:
30 mins
Total Time:
35 mins
Cal/Serv:
417
Ingredients
1Tbsp.
olive oil
1
onion, finely chopped
2
celery sticks, sliced
1l
vegetable stock
300g
gammon steaks
125g
small shape pasta
100g
spring greens, shredded
275g
frozen peas
finely grated zest and juice 1/2 lemon
large handful basil, leaves picked and sliced
50g
Parmesan, finely grated
Directions
Step 1Heat the oil in a large pan over low heat and fry the onion and celery for 10min, until softened.
Step 2Pour in the stock and bring up to a simmer. Add the gammon steaks and cook for 5min, or until cooked through. Lift the steaks on to a board and leave until cool enough to handle.
Step 3Meanwhile, turn up the heat under the pan to high and bring to the boil. Stir in the pasta and cook according to pack instructions, to al dente, adding the spring greens and peas for the final 3min of cooking.
Step 4Meanwhile, finely chop the ham, discarding any fat or sinew.
Step 5Add the ham, lemon zest and juice, basil and most of the Parmesan to the pan. Check seasoning. Ladle into 4 bowls and sprinkle over the remaining Parmesan. Serve.
GH Tips
For an even speedier supper, leave out step 2 and stir 275g shredded ham hock into the hot stock, together with the spring greens and peas.
One of our top tips to make sure the broth is full of flavour is to add your Parmesan rind into the pan while everything is simmering away. Remove the Parmesan rind at the end, and serve your minestrone with a crusty bread roll or fresh slices of sourdough bread.
An experienced and highly skilled team of food writers, stylists and digital content producers, the Good Housekeeping Cookery Team is a close-knit squad of food obsessives. Cookery Editor Emma Franklin is our resident chilli obsessive and barbecue expert, who spends an inordinate amount of time on holidays poking round the local supermarkets seeking out new and exciting foods. Senior Cookery Writer Alice Shields is a former pastry chef and baking fanatic who loves making bread and would have peanut butter with everything if she could. Her favourite carb is pasta, and our vibrant green spaghetti is her weeknight go-to. Lover of all things savoury, Senior Cookery Writer Grace Evans can be found eating crispy corn and nocellara olives at every opportunity, and will take the cheeseboard over dessert any time (though she cannot resist a slice of tres leches cake). With a wealth of professional kitchen know-how, culinary training and years of experience between them, they are all dedicated to ensuring every Good Housekeeping recipe is the best it can be, so you can trust they’ll work (and if they don’t – we’ll have the answer for why*) every time (*90% of the time the answer is: “buy an separate oven thermometer”!).
