The Hearty Toddler Vegetable Soup With Everything (Ribollita)
Italian soups are often of the chunky and funky variety, wedding multiple al dente vegetables, beans, and pieces of meat together in thin broths (see: minestrone, Italian wedding soups)–not exactly the soup dreams of a small child. But the blender is your friend, my friend: it can puree any of that into a form more palatable for primitive palates. This play on Ribollita, essentially a minestrone thickened with bread, does just that: by whizzing kale and white beans until they become smooth and, well, non-existent, you create a simple green soup that’s healthy and tasty–and your child has no idea what’s in it.
(Check out our other great soup recipes!)
Ingredients
Instructions
Prep
Chop carrots into small coins; dice onion into small pieces. Rip off leafy edges from the kale leaves and discard the remaining part of the kale (i.e., the stem and ribs).
Cook
- Heat a pot or Dutch oven to Medium, adding a glug of olive oil once hot; toss in kale pieces and cook until softened, about one minute. Add in minced garlic and cook for another minute, then add a splash of water and cook until the liquid evaporates. Once it does, remove kale from heat and place in your blender.
- Return pot to stove, add another glug of olive oil, and add in carrots, onions, salt, and pepper; cook until onions are translucent and carrots are starting to soften, about 6-7 minutes. Add a spoonful of minced garlic and a few shakes of your spices and stir; allow to cook an additional 30-60 seconds.
- Add in chicken broth, beans, the parmesan rind (if using), and two cups of water; zest the peel of the orange into the pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and cook for 10 minutes.
- When done cooking, turn off heat and add 1 tbsp of unsalted butter; allow it to melt. Taste soup and salt and pepper as needed.
- Pour contents of your pot into the blender, along with the bread; blend until smooth. If overly thick, add additional splashes of broth or water until it reaches its desired consistency.
Serve
Pour soup into a bowl, then squeeze a bit of orange on top and shave or sprinkle parmesan all over. If a vividly green bowl makes your child slightly skittish, drizzle some yogurt or sour cream all around; dotting it with Goldfish crackers helps, too. If you have your doubts that even those moves won’t work, the soup tastes good over pasta or rice, too–just add a bit of the cooking water to it to thin a bit, then toss in your noodle or grain.
Adapt
You can use spinach in place of kale–about half a bag of spinach (i.e., 2 oz) should do–but note it will have a grassier flavor that may require additional squeezes of orange (or lemon), some more cheese, and/or a bit of yogurt or sour cream to make more palatable for your child.
