Ricotta soup

Preparing ricotta soup is really simple and just a few ingredients are needed. Here's how to make it with the Tuscan recipe with spinach.

When we talk about soups, what reason other than Tuscany could give birth to this very particular recipe ? We are talking about ricotta soup, a typical dish of the region consumed especially in winter. Warm and invigorating, it is prepared with very few fresh ingredients and for this very reason it is important that they are quality.

Choose fresh sheep's ricotta to give the Maremma ricotta soup its characteristic flavor and accompany it with some Tuscan bread croutons . Only in this way will you be able to savor the genuine taste of cocotta, another name by which this dish is known. What do you think, have we convinced you to try it?

How to prepare the ricotta soup recipe

1. First, finely chop the onion and brown it in a pan with oil and a pinch of salt .
2. Once tender and transparent, add the sifted ricotta and mix well, also adding a couple of spoons of water to make it dissolve better.
3. Wash the spinach , dry it and remove the hard stem.
4. Then cut them into rather fine strips and add them to the pan together with the tomato paste.
5. Leave to cook for an hour , stirring occasionally and adding hot water or vegetable broth as needed.
6. When almost cooked, add salt and flavor with nutmeg . If desired, adding a pinch of cinnamon can also make the flavor of this dish even more interesting.
7. Just before the end of cooking, heat the slices of Tuscan bread on the grill or in the pan and use them to accompany the soup.

In this short video you can observe all the steps and the final consistency of the dish. Inviting right?

Let's stay on the topic of Tuscan recipes by offering you two classics: ribollita and pappa al pomodoro . Which of these is your favorite? Furthermore, have you noticed how these recipes are all suitable for vegetarians too?

Conservation

By now you know, soups are even better the next day because all the flavors have the opportunity to blend together and ricotta soup is certainly no exception. You can keep it in the refrigerator for a couple of days and consume it after heating it in the pan for a few minutes.

Origin and history

Going deeper into Tuscan cuisine, we find strong similarities between this recipe and the Arcidossina soup , a typical dish from the Mount Amiata area. In fact, the ingredients are more or less the same, except for the presence in some recipes of strigoli ( Silene inflata ), a spontaneous herb that grows in the chestnut groves of the area. Another subtle difference is the addition of the ricotta once cooked rather than, as we saw in the Maremma ricotta soup, during the first stages.

In all cases we are talking about very poor dishes. In fact, ricotta was a waste cheese, that is, it was obtained only after the production of more valuable cheeses such as Tuscan pecorino and all farmers could have access to it. The same goes for bread : stale bread was used which, thanks to the soup, became edible as well as satiating.

Today ricotta is no longer considered a poor cheese. On the contrary, it has acquired its own dignity, becoming a traditional Italian agri-food product . There are also two PDOs : buffalo ricotta from Campania and Roman ricotta.

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Tuscan acquacotta: a very tasty dish from the poor tradition