Ribollita
The name means literally "reboiled", and it is an instruction rather than a flourish. Ribollita is made yesterday and eaten today: overnight the bread breaks down completely and the soup thickens until a spoon stands up in it. This is peasant cooking, where nothing is thrown away — stale bread and tough kale leaves are ingredients here, not waste.
Your own work in that: 0 min.
- Soffritto 20 min
- Simmering the vegetables 45 min
- Bread 15 min
- Resting 20 min
- Reboiling 20 min
Step by step
0 / 7 doneMake the soffritto very slowly
Dice the onion, carrot and celery finely and sweat them in the oil for 15 minutes over low heat, until soft and translucent but not coloured. This is not frying: the point is to draw the sweetness out of the vegetables, not to caramelise them.
Ingredients: 80 ml olive oil · 1 pcs onion · 2 pcs carrots · 2 pcs celery sticks · 3 cloves garlic · 1 tsp rosemary · 1 tsp thyme · ½ tsp chilli flakes · 400 g tomato passata
Soft and translucent, never browned.Add garlic, herbs and passata
Add the garlic, rosemary, thyme and chilli, fry for one minute, then pour in the passata and cook 5 minutes until it reduces and darkens. Added to the softened vegetables and fried only briefly, the garlic will not scorch and turn bitter.
Ingredients: 80 ml olive oil · 1 pcs onion · 2 pcs carrots · 2 pcs celery sticks · 3 cloves garlic · 1 tsp rosemary · 1 tsp thyme · ½ tsp chilli flakes · 400 g tomato passata
Mash a third of the beans
Mash a third of the beans with a fork along with a little of their liquid, leaving the rest whole. The starch from the crushed beans thickens the soup and makes it creamy — there is no flour and no cream in this dish, the body comes entirely from beans and bread.
Ingredients: 500 g white beans · 300 g kale · 200 g white cabbage · 300 g potatoes · 1200 ml vegetable stock · 1 tsp salt · ½ tsp pepper
A third mashed — that is the whole thickener.Add the vegetables and simmer 30 minutes
Add the diced potatoes, shredded cabbage, beans and stock, and simmer for 30 minutes. Add the kale, stems removed, for the last 15 minutes — it should collapse completely rather than stay al dente. Nothing in a ribollita is crisp.
Ingredients: 500 g white beans · 300 g kale · 200 g white cabbage · 300 g potatoes · 1200 ml vegetable stock · 1 tsp salt · ½ tsp pepper
Stir in the stale bread
Tear the bread into pieces, stir it into the pot and cook for 15 minutes. The bread must disintegrate, not float in chunks — it is what turns a soup into something you eat with a fork. Fresh bread turns to paste, which is why it has to be stale.
Ingredients: 250 g stale bread · 60 ml olive oil · 40 g parmesan
The bread should vanish into the soup, not float.Rest it — ideally until tomorrow
Turn off the heat and leave it for at least 20 minutes, or until the next day if you have time. This is not a cosmetic step: the bread soaks up the liquid completely and the soup thickens noticeably. Hence the name — ribollita is boiled a second time only after resting.
Ingredients: 250 g stale bread · 60 ml olive oil · 40 g parmesan
Reboil and pour on the oil
Reheat gently, loosening with water to the thickness of a heavy stew, and season with salt and pepper. Ladle into bowls and pour raw olive oil over generously — that cold-added oil is what carries the aroma of the whole dish. Parmesan optional.
Ingredients: 250 g stale bread · 60 ml olive oil · 40 g parmesan
Before you start
Starting from dried beans
Soak 250 g of dried cannellini overnight and cook them with a sprig of sage and a garlic clove. Keep the cooking water — it is thick with starch and goes into the soup in place of some of the stock.
Fried in a pan
By the next day the soup is thick enough to fry: put a spoonful into hot olive oil, flatten it and brown on both sides. That is how Tuscans use up leftovers.
Instead of kale
Out of season, savoy cabbage or chard both work. Spinach does not — it dissolves in minutes and lacks the distinct, faintly bitter note the dish is built on.
