Ribòl Trentino

Trentino, Trentino-Alto Adige

Trentino's recycled polenta soup: leftover cold polenta broken into chunks and added to simmering beef or pork broth with borlotti beans, lard, onion, and black pepper — the polenta dissolves partially to thicken the broth while retaining some chunks, creating a thick, porridge-like soup of remarkable depth. The name 'ribòl' comes from 'reboiled' — it is, at its most fundamental, leftover polenta reboiled in the next morning's broth. One of the quintessential re-use dishes of alpine mountain cooking.

• Both are thick legume-and-starch soups from the Veneto-Trentino alpine tradition — Venetan uses pasta, Trentino uses leftover polenta, both thickening a bean broth with a starchy carbohydrate to create a single, unified filling soup → Pasta e Fagioli Veneta Venetian
• Both are grain-based, recooked breakfast soups of the alpine/northern European agricultural tradition — Scottish oats cooked in water or milk, Trentino polenta reboiled in meat broth, both providing sustained energy from grain starch in a warming liquid format → Porridge (Oat Porridge) Scottish

Thick, starchy from dissolving polenta, beefy from the bone broth, with earthy borlotti beans — hearty mountain breakfast-soup of complete simplicity