Ribollita
A Tuscan bread and bean soup cooked twice — old, unsalted bread is folded into the soup and the dish rests overnight.
The beans are cooked tender and become both whole beans and a rough purée, before the vegetables slowly build the soup's sweetness and body. The finished soup is layered with dry bread, rests overnight, and is reboiled to the thick, rustic mass ribollita should be. The overnight rest with the bread is what determines the final, spoon-standing consistency.
Ingredients
The beans
- 300 g dried cannellini beans, soaked overnight
- 1 clove garlic, crushed, skin on
- 1 sprig rosemary
- 1 tsp salt
The soup
- 1 dl olive oil
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 2 carrots, in small dice
- 2 pcs celery, in small dice
- 2 clove garlic, finely chopped
- 1 can peeled tomatoes, crushed by hand
- 400 g cavolo nero, stems removed, roughly sliced
- 300 g savoy cabbage, roughly sliced
- 200 g chard, roughly sliced
- 250 g potatoes, peeled, diced
- salt, to taste
- freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For layering and serving
- 300 g Tuscan bread, old and dry, in thick slices
- 1 red onion, in paper-thin rings
- 1 dl extra virgin olive oil, for reboiling and the table
How to make it
- Drain the soaked cannellini beans into a sieve and rinse them, then place them in a pot with plenty of cold water, the crushed garlic clove, and the rosemary sprig. Bring it slowly to a boil and let the beans simmer, covered, for 60-70 minutes, until the skins are still whole and the inside is soft and mealy. ⏱ 1 h–1 h 10 min · passiveChef's tip Keep it at a lazy simmer where bubbles just break the surface. A rolling boil tumbles the beans against each other and splits the skins, and loose skins float free in the finished soup.
- Fish out the rosemary sprig and garlic clove and stir the salt into the hot pot, so the beans draw flavor into themselves in their own cooking water. Salt only now, because salting from the start makes the skins tough and causes them to split.
- Ladle half of the salted beans into a bowl with a little of the cooking water and mash them against the side of the bowl with a fork, until they become a thick, uneven purée with small whole pieces still left in it. Save the rest of the beans and the rest of the cooking water — it is the soup's only liquid. ⏱ 10 minChef's tip Mashing releases the beans' starch into the water, which is what gives ribollita body without flour or cream. Leaving half the beans whole keeps something to bite against in an otherwise soft dish.
- Heat the olive oil in a large heavy-bottomed pot over medium-low heat and sauté the onion, carrots, and celery for 12 minutes, until the vegetables are completely soft and smell sweet without having taken on color. ⏱ 10 min
- Stir in the finely chopped garlic and let it cook along for 1 minute, until it is fragrant and has lost its raw, sharp edge.
- Add the crushed peeled tomatoes and let them cook down over medium heat for 5 minutes, until the color is darker and the oil beads along the edge of the pot.
- Add the savoy cabbage, cavolo nero, and chard to the pot handful by handful and turn them for 10 minutes, until the greens have wilted down to less than half and glisten with oil. ⏱ 10 min
- Add the diced potatoes, the bean purée, and the whole beans, and top up with enough of the hot cooking water that the vegetables are just covered. Bring it to a boil for 5 minutes while stirring, so the bean purée distributes itself instead of settling on the bottom.Chef's tip Use only the beans' cooking water — it is thick with starch, where tap water just dilutes. The soup thickens further over the hour it simmers, so err on the side of too little liquid rather than too much.
- Put the lid on and let the soup simmer gently for 60 minutes, until the greens are completely tender and the potatoes have broken apart at the edges, so the soup is thick enough that a spoon leaves a brief trail through it. ⏱ 1 h · passive
- Season the soup well with salt and freshly ground black pepper. It should taste finished and a touch too strong now, because the unsalted Tuscan bread will soak up and pull the flavor down.
- Layer the dry bread slices into the pot with the hot soup in between, so that each layer of bread is completely covered. Press the layers down with the back of a spoon for 10 minutes, until the bread is soaked through and no longer floats up. ⏱ 10 minChef's tip The bread must be properly dry — several days old, hard enough to resist the knife. Fresh or merely soft bread has no structure left to hold and disintegrates into paste instead of swelling into soft, distinct layers.
- Let the pot cool on the counter, cover it, and refrigerate it until the next day (see "Advance Prep"). The rest is the dish itself: the bread and the bean starch bind the soup together into one mass.
- Reheat the rested soup over medium-low heat in a wide heavy-bottomed pot with a drizzle of the extra virgin olive oil. Stir regularly, scraping all the way to the bottom, for 25 minutes, until the mass is cohesive and a spoon can stand almost upright in it. Stir the pale crust that forms on the bottom back into the soup, but never let it scorch. ⏱ 25 minChef's tip A mass this thick has no circulation: the heat sits still on the bottom and scorches long before the surface bubbles. Stir down to the bottom with a flat spoon every couple of minutes — a scorched taste settles into the whole pot.
- Ladle the reboiled ribollita into deep bowls in rough spoonfuls, so the surface is uneven, and lay a few paper-thin red onion rings over each portion. Put the bottle of extra virgin olive oil and the pepper mill on the table, so everyone drizzles a thin stream of raw oil over their own bowl just before eating.Chef's tip The peppery, grassy aroma of extra virgin oil is volatile and largely lost in a hot pot — that is why the last drizzle goes on at the table, over the bowl, not into the soup while it cooks.
