A thick, soul-warming Tuscan soup of cannellini beans, lacinato kale, and day-old bread, reboiled until lusciously creamy.
Ingredients
300g dried cannellini beans (soaked overnight) or 2 cans
1 large onion, diced
2 carrots, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
4 cloves garlic, sliced
400g canned tomatoes
1 bunch lacinato (Tuscan) kale, stemmed and chopped
200g day-old Tuscan bread, torn
1.5L vegetable broth
4 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
Salt, pepper, red pepper flakes
Instructions
1Cook soaked beans in unsalted water until tender, about 1 hour. Drain, mash half roughly.
2In a large pot, sauté onion, carrots, and celery in 2 tbsp olive oil for 8 min. Add garlic, cook 1 min.
3Add tomatoes and broth, bring to a simmer. Add kale and cook 15 min until tender.
4Stir in all the beans (whole and mashed) and torn bread. Simmer 20 min, stirring often, until thick and porridge-like.
5Season generously. For best results, cool and refrigerate overnight, then reboll (ribollita means "reboiled").
6Serve in bowls drizzled with your best olive oil and a crack of black pepper.
Did You Know?
Ribollita literally means "reboiled" — it was originally made by servants who reboiled leftover minestrone with stale bread from their masters' tables.