By Sarah DiGregorio
- Total Time
- 2 hours
- Rating
- 4(586)
- Notes
- Read community notes
This classic Italian vegetable stew is a wonderful way to revive leftover cooked vegetables and stale bread (ribollita means “reboiled” in Italian). You can prepare it in a pot following a more traditional method, but here, a pressure cooker makes it possible to cook dried beans relatively quickly without having to soak them. Thanks to a quick sauté in olive oil, the vegetables become silky and almost disappear into the soup. If you’d like to add leftover cooked vegetables, throw them in with the greens at the very end so they don’t overcook.
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Ingredients
Yield:6 to 8 servings (about 8 cups)
- ¼cup olive oil, plus more for drizzling
- 1large yellow or red onion, finely chopped
- Kosher salt and black pepper
- 1large leek, trimmed, white and light green parts sliced
- 3celery stalks, finely chopped
- 1small fennel bulb, trimmed, cored and finely chopped, fronds reserved
- 14garlic cloves, smashed and roughly chopped
- 2dried bay leaves
- 1teaspoon red-pepper flakes, plus more for serving
- 1cup dry white wine
- 5cups chicken or vegetable stock
- 1½cups dried white beans, such as cannellini or great Northern (no need to soak)
- 1(15-ounce) can crushed tomatoes
- 3fresh thyme sprigs or 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- 1fresh rosemary sprig or ½ teaspoon dried rosemary
- 2tablespoons fresh lemon juice (from about ½ lemon)
- 1bunch kale, chard or collards (about 12 ounces), stemmed and finely chopped, or 1 (10-ounce) bag frozen chopped spinach or kale
- 2teaspoons balsamic vinegar, preferably aged
- 8slices crusty bread, for serving
- 1garlic clove, cut in half
- Olive oil
- 8ounces smoked or regular mozzarella, cut into 8 (¼-inch-thick) slices
For the Soup
For the Toasts
Ingredient Substitution Guide
Nutritional analysis per serving (8 servings)
552 calories; 24 grams fat; 7 grams saturated fat; 0 grams trans fat; 12 grams monounsaturated fat; 3 grams polyunsaturated fat; 58 grams carbohydrates; 12 grams dietary fiber; 10 grams sugars; 25 grams protein; 1062 milligrams sodium
Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
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Preparation
Step
1
Turn on the sauté setting of a 6- to 8-quart electric pressure cooker and heat the oil. Add the onion, season with salt, and cook, stirring occasionally, until limp and translucent, 6 to 8 minutes. Add the leek, celery and fennel, season with salt, and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and fragrant, about 8 minutes. Add the chopped garlic, bay leaves, red-pepper flakes and white wine; season with a generous amount of pepper. Stir well and let the wine come to a simmer before turning off the heat.
Step
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Add the stock, beans, tomatoes, thyme, rosemary and lemon juice. Cook on high pressure until the beans are creamy, 50 minutes to 1 hour.
Step
3
Allow the pressure to release naturally for 10 minutes, then release the remaining pressure manually. Turn on the sauté setting. Remove and discard the bay leaves and herb sprigs (if using). Stir in the greens and vinegar.
Step
4
Let the greens cook, stirring occasionally, while you make the toasts: Turn on the broiler. Rub the bread slices with the halved garlic and drizzle them with olive oil. Position a rack 6 inches from the broiler, and toast the slices until very light golden, 1 to 2 minutes. Add 1 slice of mozzarella to each toast and broil until softened and browned in spots.
Step
5
Season the soup to taste with salt and pepper. Divide the soup among bowls, adding a mozzarella toast in each bowl. Top with the reserved fennel fronds and black pepper or red-pepper flakes, if desired.
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586
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Cooking Notes
Lauren Fitzgerald
This was delicious! My only tweak is to pressure-cook for 50 minutes, stir (so the uncooked beans at the top get integrated), and pressure-cook for another 15 or so. I also didn't bother with the mozzerella: grating parm into the soup was fine and toasting and rubbing the bread with garlic was enough (and more Tuscan). As close to ribollita as I am likely to get on my own!
Haiku
I would encourage people to substitue liberally and not worry too much about lacking some of the ingredients. This is a great recipe for pantry cooking in time of coronavirus (I did also get a fresh veggie delivery which helps!).I used fresh spinach as the greens and canned beans instead of dry. No fennel, celery, bay leaves or rosemary, but I had the other ingredients. Pressure cooked for only 20 minutes. Made for a delicious meal... well probably 5 meals or so!
MoMama
Tasty! I will reduce the wine a bit next time as it as more prominent than I wanted. I couldn't bring myself to use 14 cloves of garlic, 4 large cloves was plenty. My beans cooked through but I did take the advice of another commenter and first pressure cooked for 45 min., opened, stirred and then pressure cooked for another 15. I had a feeling my 4 yo wouldn't eat as is so I buzzed a 1/2 of final product with a stick blender, used as a sauce on the mozzarella toasts with more spinach. Homerun.
MoMama
Laren, thank you for the helpful tip to pressure cook twice - worked like a charm! Appreciate when people take the time to share. :)
jane
Definitely soak the beans or you’ll be pressure cooking much longer and that will reduce your liquid.
RBCinNYC
This was fantastic. I don’t like the way pressure cooker soups turn out, so I pressure cooked the beans separately with aromatics, then followed the recipe like making a regular stovetop soup and added the cooked beans toward the end. Still very easy.
Sarah
This was much better the second day. And I wouldn’t have thought it but the unsoaked beans really did need the full time at high pressure to soften.
L. Amenope
To avoid the overheating problem, make sure you (1)add liquid (in this case wine) and be sure to scrape up every brown bit on the bottom, and (2)turn off the sauté function before you turn on the pressure. I find a flat-edge wooden spatula works best for the scraping part.
William
This was excellent! I had to use navy beans instead; if you find yourself in the same position I'd recommend upping the measure to at least two cups. The smoky flavor of the mozzarella was a welcome addition too. If you want to keep it vegan I'd advise sprinkling it with nutritional yeast or some liquid smoke(maybe?)
rmalak
Love this recipe, like to use pinquitos - small red beans from Rancho Gordo. Dad likes it too.
Kathleen
I would absolutely make this again. After reading notes and doing a little internet Instant Pot research for cooking beans, I created a delicious lunch. Followed the recipe for ingredients, but added everything before cooking. (Sautéed veggies and spices for only 5 minutes. Added kaleand tomatoes and broth. Used dried pinto beans not pre soaked.) Set on stew setting for 45 minutes and let sit for 10 minutes before quick release. Fabulous.
Gary
If you don’t have a pressure cooker, this was delicious made with canned cannellini beans and simmered in a large pot for about the same amount of time as the pressure cooker. Followed the advice of many others and reduced the garlic. Mashed some of the beans with some of the liquid and added it back in the soup to give it a thicker, creamer texture. Even better reheated the next day.
Giul
Recipe worked great for me as-is. Some have suggested doing an extra 15m pressure cook after stirring so the beans at the top soften more - I didn’t find this necessary, as you are still cooking and simmering the stew when you add the greens. That did the trick with the beans. Plus, this makes great leftovers, almost thickens to an Italian-style chili - and it’s nice to not have things too overcooked for leftovers.
veg’nmom
This is one of the best recipes on NY Times Cooking app. I make it as written and it never disappoints. My family loves it.
Sharanya
I soaked for 2 days pressure cooked for 10 min with natural release. Worked perfectly for the beans but still found the soup kind of bland
Kristi
55 minutes in the pressure cooker wasn't enough to get the unsoaked beans cooked. I'll try the suggestion below of 50 mins, stir, plus an additional 15 mins.
CT Cook
My lack of experience in making soup definitely showed, but it’s a fairly yummy end result. I’ll definitely try again. Lacking white wine, I used white wine vinegar diluted with half water per Martha Stewart. So I unfortunately couldn’t add balsamic at the end without going too sour. Bone broth resulted in needing sugar at the end to counter the bitterness. Seasoning generously with pepper was too vague - mine was too spicy for my preschoolers who were really excited to try it.
Ed
Much better the second day! It literally needs to be re-boiled
Megan
Very good, and I would definitely make again! I did not soak the beans & they were undercooked at the end of the suggested cooking time, so next time I will soak them. Otherwise, it was very good!
DanKC
Excellent and full of flavor. Perfect for pre-Christmas dinner party with friends or lunches. I added another can of tomatoes, chopped carrots plus swiss chard for the greens. Go 70 mins for pressure cook for softer beans. Freezes beautifully.
Orlynur
Adam loves the bread.Add more red pepper flakes to cooking.Used cooked frozen beans and cooked it in instant pot for 40 minutes. it was great.
Tough Bean
Made this with pinto beans in the instant pot - 1 hr and 5 minutes of pressure cooking plus 1 hr of simmering later I am still trying to get these beans to cook all the way through! Don't be like me. Soak your beans or use canned beans.
Mark E. Smith
This was oh-my-god delicious. Made exactly per recipe. Pretty simple assembly of ingredients and of course mostly hands-off for the cooking time. The best puttanesca I’ve eaten. Feeds a crowd and freezes well. With polenta— gorgeous!
CKE
This was really excellent and not very difficult to prepare. I advise getting prepped earlier than needed as the instant pot will take a while to pressurize before the hour cook time. For simplicity and efficiency, I chopped and then sautéed all the veggies in step 1 together and cooked for a total time of 16 minutes. Also skipped the mozzarella bread and instead toasted/buttered it—still very good. Topped soup with fresh grated parm.
xtine
This is the best soup I’ve ever made. Followed the recipe exactly and it turned out fantastic. 1 hour was perfect for the beans to get soft but not too mushy. The smoked mozzarella toasts were the perfect addition. Will be making this again and again.
Sonya
Pressure cooked for 60 mins and released after 20
Jonas
tremendous
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