Ribollita recipe: the Tuscan soup that is boiled twice

This ribollita recipe makes Florence's bread, bean and cavolo nero soup the slow way: dried cannellini, stale unsalted bread, a night's rest and a second boil.

Ribollita means reboiled: Tuscan households cooked a big pot of meatless vegetable soup and reheated it with bread on the following days. The earliest written mention usually cited is Alberto Cougnet's L'arte cucinaria in Italia, from 1910.

The quantities are the house's own, after two published versions: the Accademia Italiana della Cucina layers bread and soup and waits a day; Visit Tuscany stirs the bread into the pot. Tuscan tradition prefers cavolo nero after the first frost, which sweetens the leaf.

The soup is finished on the second day; the first only gets it ready.

Ingredients

• 300 g dried cannellini beans
• 5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus more to serve
• 1 onion, 2 carrots and 2 celery stalks, finely diced
• 1 potato (about 200 g), diced
• 200 g tinned peeled tomatoes, crushed
• 400 g cavolo nero, stalks removed
• 300 g savoy cabbage
• 200 g chard
• 300 g stale unsalted Tuscan bread, sliced
• Salt and black pepper

Method

1. Soak the beans for 12 hours in cold water: a hydrated bean cooks evenly and keeps its skin.
2. Drain, cover with 2 litres of fresh water and simmer gently for about 1 hour 20 minutes, until creamy. A hard boil splits the skins; salt in the last 10 minutes.
3. Purée two thirds of the beans with 500 ml of their liquid: the starch thickens the soup without flour.
4. Soften the onion, carrot and celery in the oil over a low heat for 10 minutes, without colouring.
5. Add the potato, the tomatoes and the greens cut into strips, then the purée and enough bean liquid to just cover. Simmer, covered, for 1 hour: cavolo nero is tough and needs the time.
6. Add the whole beans, season and cook 10 minutes more. Layer bread and soup in a deep dish, ending with soup, cool and refrigerate overnight: the bread drinks the broth and the soup sets.
7. The next day, boil it again: 10 to 15 minutes in a wide pan with a splash of water, stirring, until it holds a spoon upright.

Which bread, which oil

Tuscan bread is baked without salt and dries hard; that crumb holds the soup together. Elsewhere, use a dense country loaf three or four days old: soft sandwich bread turns to paste. The oil goes on raw at the table, ideally the season's first pressing, as on olio nuovo bruschetta.

Ribollita recipe: questions and answers

Can I use kale instead of cavolo nero? Yes. Cavolo nero is a kale, sold abroad as Tuscan or lacinato kale; curly kale takes the same cooking time.

Can I make ribollita with tinned beans? Yes: 750 g of drained beans replace the 300 g dried. Use water for the liquid; the soup will be slightly less creamy.

How long does ribollita keep, and can it be frozen? Three to four days in the fridge, reboiled before serving, or three months in the freezer.