It’s amazing how many lousy clone recipes for this delicious chili-like soup are floating around the Internet. Cooking message boards, and questionable sites that claim to have “actual restaurant recipes” have for years passed off numerous versions only to have disappointed home chefs waste ingredients. What’s puzzling is they leave out major ingredients that you can clearly see in the real thing, like the carrots, or ground beef, or two kinds of beans. Others don’t even get the pasta right—it’s obviously ditali pasta, which are short little tubes. So, if you want the taste of Olive Garden’s famous Pasta e Fagioli at home, this may be the only recipe out there that will live up to a side-by-side taste test.
SERVES 8
INGREDIENTS:
- 1 pound ground beef
- 1 small onion, diced (1 cup)
- 1 large carrot, julienned (1 cup)
- 3 stalks celery, chopped (1 cup)
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 14.5-ounce cans diced tomatoes
- 1 15-ounce can red kidney beans (with liquid)
- 1 15-ounce can Great Northern beans (with liquid)
- 1 15-ounce can tomato sauce
- 1 12-ounce can V-8 juice
- 1 tablespoon white vinegar
- 1 ½ teaspoons salt
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon dried basil
- ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
- ½ teaspoon dried thyme
- ½ pound (½ pkg.) ditali pasta
INSTRUCTIONS:
- In a large saucepan or pot, brown the ground beef over medium heat. Drain off most of the fat.
- Add onion, carrot, celery, and garlic to the saucepan. Saute for 10 minutes.
- Stir in the remaining ingredients, except for the pasta. Simmer the mixture for 1 hour.
- Around 50 minutes into the simmering, cook the pasta in 1½ to 2 quarts of boiling water over high heat. Cook for 10 minutes or until the pasta is al dente, or slightly tough. Drain the cooked pasta.
- Add the pasta to the large pot of soup. Simmer for an additional 5 to 10 minutes. Serve the soup.
