Ribollita
Prep Time: 45 minutes | Cook Time: 35 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes | Serves: 6
I’m sitting at my desk watching the lightning light up my room and listening to the heavy rain’s steady downpour. This is the perfect weather for a hearty soup like Ribollita. It’s brimming with vegetables in a yummy, brothy base with smoky bacon and cannellini beans. Even though it’s a soup, it still makes a filling meal. Perfect for winter nights, stormy nights, or even Sunday lunches with friends and family around the table.
Ribollita is a Tuscan soup that traditionally includes day-old bread added into the soup to thicken. I like to ladle the ribollita over lightly toasted chunks of bread in the bottom of my bowl. You can leave the bread out completely if you’d like for dietary reasons if needed, but a true ribollita is thickened with almost-stale bread.
Another great addition to ribollita is a Parmesan rind. It will impart some extra flavor that you really don’t want to miss. I keep Parmesan rinds in the back of my cheese drawer just for uses like this. Either remove the rind just before serving the soup, or just push it to the side of your bowl as you eat. Canned cannellini beans are a convenience, but you can also make your beans from dried. I used drained and rinsed canned beans in this recipe.
You can change out the veggies if you’d like. Use more or less of what’s listed in the ingredient list. It’s easy to double the recipe to make sure you’ll have easy-to-reheat leftovers.
Ribollita
Ingredients
- 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
- 1/2 pound bacon, cooked and crumbled
- 2 zucchini squash, diced
- 2 yellow squash, diced
- 1 onion, diced
- 2 celery ribs, sliced
- 5 carrots, sliced
- 2 leeks, white part only, sliced
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 1/2-2 quarts chicken stock, lower sodium
- 1 15-ounce can petite diced tomatoes, undrained
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 3 dried bay leaves
- 6 ounces baby spinach or kale, chopped
- 2 tablespoons fresh Italian parsley, minced
- 3 tablespoons fresh basil, chopped
- 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
- 1 tablespoon fresh rosemary leaves
- 2-3" Parmesan rind
- 2 15-ounce cans cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
- 1 small loaf of hardy, day-old bread, torn into chunks
Instructions
For the Bread:
- Preheat the broiler.
- Using your hands, tear the loaf of bread into chunks that are not too small that they’ll just dissolve and not too large they won’t fit into individual bowls.
- Spread the chunks of bread onto a baking sheet and drizzle with one tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil.
- Place the pan under the broiler just long enough to get some toasted edges and nice browning on the bread.
- Remove the pan from the oven and set aside.
For the Soup:
- Have all your vegetables prepped and chopped and ready to go.
- In a stockpot over medium-high heat, heat the remaining two tablespoons of oil.
- Once the oil is shimmering, add the zucchini, squash, onion, celery, carrots, leeks, and garlic. Stir often until vegetables are slightly softened, about 8 minutes. If you like your veggies super-soft, sauté a little longer.
- Add the tomatoes, stock, and tomato paste. Stir to blend the tomato paste thoroughly.
- Add the bay leaves and turn to low and simmer for 20 minutes.
- Discard bay leaves, add the fresh herbs, spinach, Parmesan rind, and beans. Stir the soup and heat through.
- To serve, place desired amount of bread into individual bowls and ladle soup over the bread and serve. Alternatively, you can ladle the soup first into the bowl, then press bread pieces into the soup.
- Enjoy!
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