Version from Italy
ribollita — Italy
Ribollita is a Tuscan bread soup, a reheated vegetable and bean soup thickened with layers of stale bread until it turns dense.
- 20 min
- Prep
- 60 min
- Cook
- 6
- Servings
- Medium
- Difficulty
Ribollita, meaning "reboiled," is a thick vegetable and bean soup built around stale bread, which is layered into the pot and left to soak until it breaks down, thickening the whole dish into something closer to a stew than a soup.
It comes from Tuscany, reported particularly from the areas around Siena, Florence, Pistoia, Prato and Arezzo and the plain of Pisa, and belongs, like much of the region's cooking, to a repertoire built around simple, inexpensive ingredients.
A vegetable and bean soup, close to minestrone, is made first with beans, cavolo nero or another dark leafy green, cabbage, carrots, celery and onion. Slices of stale bread are layered into the pot with the soup poured over them and left to soften and absorb the liquid. The whole dish is then reheated, sometimes the next day or over several days, thickening further each time as more bread breaks down, until it is dense enough to hold a spoon upright.
What sets ribollita apart from a plain vegetable soup is exactly this reheating and bread-thickening step: it is conceived as a soup that improves by being made in advance and warmed again, rather than served fresh the same day, and finished simply at the table with a drizzle of olive oil.
Preparation
Chop the onion, carrots, and celery, and sauté them in olive oil until softened.
Add the canned tomatoes and cook for a few minutes.
Stir in the cannellini beans, broth, and salt.
Simmer for twenty minutes, then add the shredded cabbage and cavolo nero.
Cook for another twenty minutes until the vegetables are tender.
Layer the stale bread into the pot, pushing it down so it soaks in the soup.
Let the soup rest, then reheat it gently the next day, stirring until it turns thick and dense.
Serve drizzled with olive oil.
