Ribollita is a
bread soup
Bread soup is a simple soup that mainly consists of stale bread. Variations exist in many countries, and it is often eaten during Lent. Both brown and white bread may be used.
The basis for bread soup is traditionally either meat soup or veget ...
,
panade,
porridge
Porridge is a food made by heating or boiling ground, crushed or chopped starchy plants, typically grain, in milk or water. It is often cooked or served with added flavourings such as sugar, honey, (dried) fruit or syrup to make a sweet cereal, ...
, or
potage made with bread and vegetables, often from leftovers.
There are many variations but the main ingredients always include leftover bread,
cannellini beans,
lacinato kale
Lacinato kale (, ) or, in Italian and often in English, (, ; literally "black cabbage") is a variety of kale with a long tradition in Italian cuisine, especially that of Tuscany. It is also known as Tuscan kale, Italian kale, dinosaur kale, ka ...
,
cabbage
Cabbage, comprising several cultivars of ''Brassica oleracea'', is a leafy green, red (purple), or white (pale green) biennial plant grown as an annual vegetable crop for its dense-leaved heads. It is descended from the wild cabbage ( ''B.&n ...
, and inexpensive vegetables such as
carrot
The carrot ('' Daucus carota'' subsp. ''sativus'') is a root vegetable, typically orange in color, though purple, black, red, white, and yellow cultivars exist, all of which are domesticated forms of the wild carrot, ''Daucus carota'', na ...
,
beans
A bean is the seed of several plants in the family Fabaceae, which are used as vegetables for human or animal food. They can be cooked in many different ways, including boiling, frying, and baking, and are used in many traditional dishes thr ...
,
chard
Chard or Swiss chard (; ''Beta vulgaris'' subsp. ''vulgaris'', Cicla Group and Flavescens Group) is a green leafy vegetable. In the cultivars of the Flavescens Group, the leaf stalks are large and often prepared separately from the leaf blade; ...
,
celery
Celery (''Apium graveolens'') is a marshland plant in the family Apiaceae that has been cultivated as a vegetable since antiquity. Celery has a long fibrous stalk tapering into leaves. Depending on location and cultivar, either its stalks, ...
,
potato
The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae.
Wild potato species can be found from the southern Uni ...
es, and
onion
An onion (''Allium cepa'' L., from Latin ''cepa'' meaning "onion"), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus '' Allium''. The shallot is a botanical variety of the on ...
. Its name means "reboiled".
It is often baked in a clay pot.
Like most
Tuscan cuisine, the soup has peasant origins. It was originally made by reheating (or reboiling) the leftover
minestrone
Minestrone (; ) is a thick soup of Italian origin made with vegetables, often with the addition of pasta or rice, sometimes both. Common ingredients include beans, onions, celery, carrots, leaf vegetables, stock, parmesan cheese and tomatoes ...
or
vegetable soup
Vegetable soup is a common soup prepared using vegetables and leaf vegetables as primary ingredients. It dates to ancient history, and is a mass-produced food product in contemporary times.
Overview
Vegetable soup is prepared using vegetables, ...
from the previous day with stale bread.
Some sources date it back to the
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
when the servants gathered up food-soaked bread
trenchers from feudal lords' banquets and boiled them for their dinners.
History
It is a typical "poor" dish of peasant origin, whose name derives from the fact that the peasants cooked a large quantity of it (especially on Fridays, being a lean dish) and then "boiled" it in a pan in the following days (hence "ribollita"), because the real soup is heated twice, otherwise it would be a very banal soup of bread and vegetables (therefore not to be confused with bread soup).
The first traces of this preparation date back to 1910 in the book ''L'arte cucinaria in Italia'' by Alberto Cougnet.
See also
*
Acquacotta
*
Pappa al pomodoro
(; translating to "tomato mush") is a thick Tuscan bread soup typically prepared with fresh tomatoes, bread, olive oil, garlic, basil, and various other fresh ingredients. It is usually made with stale or leftover bread, and can be served hot, ...
*
List of Italian soups
*
List of vegetable soups
This is a list of vegetable soups. Vegetable soup is a common soup prepared using vegetables and leaf vegetables as primary ingredients.
Vegetable soups
* Atama soup – a vegetable and palm nut soup that originates in South Nigeria.
*
*
...
*
List of bread dishes
This is a list of bread dishes and foods, which use bread as a primary ingredient. Bread is a staple food prepared from a dough of flour and water, usually by baking. Throughout recorded history it has been popular around the world and is one of ...
Notes
External links
''Ribollita'' recipe
Italian soups
Cuisine of Tuscany
Bread soups
Peasant food
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