Tuscan ribollita

Ribollita is a semi-solid soup typical of Tuscan cuisine. Among the ingredients that cannot be missing are bread, black cabbage and beans.

Today we are going to discover one of the most famous and appreciated Tuscan recipes of all, ribollita, a rich and delicious soup that is prepared especially during the cold seasons, originating from the Florence and Arezzo area. This recipe, which was originally part of the humble peasant tradition, has established itself over time, becoming a truly typical Tuscan dish.

Its name derives from the fact that once upon a time the soup was prepared in large quantities and the following days literally "reboiled" and enjoyed again. For the original Tuscan recipe , stale Tuscan bread, beans and black cabbage cannot be missing but for the rest each family has its own recipe, more or less rich.

How to prepare the Tuscan ribollita recipe

1. First, let's deal with cannellini beans . Traditionally, dried ones should be used so leave them to soak for 12 hours in water before proceeding with cooking.
2. Place them in a pan together with a clove of garlic and two bay leaves and boil them for an hour . 30 minutes will be enough in a pressure cooker. Once ready, add a teaspoon of coarse salt . Divide them into two parts: keep one whole, blend the other with a little cooking liquid to obtain a cream. This step is optional but useful to make the soup more enveloping.
3. Once the beans are ready, you can start preparing the ribollita. In a large pan, make the classic sauté by roughly chopping onion, celery and carrot. Fry with extra virgin olive oil for a few minutes.
4. In the meantime, clean the cabbage and black cabbage by removing the hard stem and slicing them into strips of about one centimeter. Place them in the pan together with the chard (herbs) and the potatoes cut into 2cm pieces.
5. After flavoring for a couple of minutes, add the peeled tomatoes mashed with a fork, the cooking water from the beans and the beans themselves.
6. Salt and pepper and season to taste with a pinch of chilli pepper . Leave the ribollita to cook for at least an hour , gradually pouring in some vegetable broth if needed.
7. Once ready, distribute slices of stale bread on the bottom of a pan, preferably terracotta. Cover with the ribollita and leave to rest for a day. The following, put on the heat and cook again, stirring. Serve with a drizzle of raw extra virgin olive oil .

In this video you can observe all the steps of the recipe but above all the final consistency of the dish. Do you know that it should be eaten with a fork since it is a semi-solid soup?

Stale bread is also the protagonist of another typical dish of Tuscan cuisine, pappa al pomodoro . Don't miss it!

Conservation

Never as with Tuscan ribollita does a leftover become precious. If consumed the next day, as tradition dictates, it is excellent, the following 2-3 days it will be even better so don't worry if you have any leftovers, in fact, make sure it happens.

Origin and history

Ribollita is a dish of humble origins that seems to have been born in medieval times . In those days earthenware pottery was the prerogative of a few so there was the custom of serving dishes inside or on top of bread and focaccias which however were not consumed. The servants therefore added them to their vegetable stews, obtaining simple but satiating dishes.

In more recent times, traces of a similar preparation are contained in the Epulario and various secrets. Treatises on Tuscan cuisine in seventeenth-century Florence written by Giovanni Del Turco, gastronomic expert at the court of Cosimo II de' Medici . Pellegrino Artusi also talks about it in his famous cookery treatise, indicating it as Tuscan peasant lean soup . Yes, because the name ribollita is relatively recent : it appears for the first time in 1910 in L'arte cucina in Italia by Alberto Cougnet.

From the Middle Ages to today, when the soup was prepared on lean Friday and re-boiled the following days, the recipe has undergone several changes. Each family has its own version of ribollita and they are all correct since it is a recycled dish.