We are trying to eat out less these days and make more home cooked meals. So I have been scouring the internet for good soup recipes to make this Fall. One of my all time favorite soups is Zuppa Toscana from Olive Garden. I found this recipe online that seemed promising and after a couple changes and test runs I think we’ve got it down!
Tuscan Soup
Prep time: 20 minutes
Cook time: 1 hour
Ingredients:
1 lb mild Italian sausage
3 large (4 small) russet baking potatoes, unpeeled and chopped into small triangles,
3 strips of cooked bacon (save the grease)
1 small onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 cups of water (more if needed)
32 oz chicken broth
1/4 tsp of crushed red pepper (omit if you use hot italian sausage)
1 cup to 1 1/4 cup of heavy whipping cream or half and half (depending on how creamy you prefer your soups)
2 cups of kale, chopped into ribbons
Directions:
1. Reserve 3 pieces of bacon and your grease from breakfast, if your bacon is still uncooked, go ahead and cook it now in your stock pot.
2. Chop onion, sauté in a little bacon grease in a large stock pot.
3. Break italian sausage up and brown in a separate frying pan.
4. While sausage and onions are cooking, clean and chop your potatoes and mince the garlic cloves.
5. Add your minced garlic, browned sausage, and chopped potatoes to the stock pot.
6. Pour water and chicken broth into a stock pot, bring to a boil.
7. Simmer on medium until potatoes are softened (about 30 minutes). Cover pot to limit moisture loss. If the water does get too low, add some more.
8. Start chopping your kale, removing stem.
9. Cut up your cooked bacon into bits.
10. Add bacon bits to the boiling potatoes.
11. Once the 30 minutes are up on the potatoes, add your chopped kale and whipping cream/half and half
12. Simmer 15 minutes. Serve with shredded Parmesan (optional).
(You can definitely cook this all in one pot by starting with your sausage, it will just take longer. 😉)
Enjoy! This is going to be a great comfort food this fall. I filled four mason jars with the leftover soup after dinner. Just pop the jar in the microwave for two minutes the next day for a quick lunch. It tastes even better than the day before! Now if I can just master Olive Garden’s breadsticks!
*The fettuccine alfredo in the picture below was also an OG wannabe. You can find the easy alfredo recipe here.
Little Seed Lane 