Zuppa Toscana Recipe (Olive Garden Copycat)

Zuppa Toscana is an Italian soup that simply means Tuscan Soup. In Italian Zuppa means soup. Classic Zuppa Toscana soup is made with additional veggies like tomatoes, zucchini, and celery and served with white beans and Tuscan Bread. However, today Zuppa Toscana is recognized as the popular menu soup from the Italian Restaurant called Olive Garden.

Yes! The soup is made in a creamy broth with potatoes (skins on), Italian Sausage, Fresh kale, and bacon!

• water- this recipe calls for water and bullion. If you wish to add chicken broth or stock simply swap out 1 liter of water (4 cups) for chicken stock and skip the bullion powder.
• Golden potatoes- leave the skins on!
• mild sausages- ground sausage is hard to come by so I like to remove the casings from 2 1/2 sausage links and use it as ground sausage without casings.
• 6 slices of bacon- use cooked and chopped bacon or diced ham. Ham is faster to slice but if your like me and pre-cook your bacon for freezer oven-baked bacon then use it!
• onion- dice one onion.
• garlic- crush two garlic cloves.
• chicken bouillon- omit chicken bouillon powder (or better than bouillon chicken base) if using chicken stock. Please salt to taste if using store bought chicken broth. You can also use chicken bouillon cubes.
• salt- seasons the soup.
• cayenne pepper- adds a nice kick to Zuppa Toscana without using Hot Sausage.
• heavy cream- gives Zuppa it’s signature creamy white look.
• kale- use one bunch of chopped fresh or frozen kale.

To Make Vegan Zuppa Toscana: Simply use Vegan sausage and Bacon bits with a heavy alternative such as almond milk.

Here are 3 easy steps to make this Italian Soup:

1. In a 4-quart pot, sauté the onion, Italian sausage, bacon, and crushed garlic for 7 minutes.
2. Add the water, salt, and chicken bullion powder. Stir in the diced potatoes and bring to a boil. Simmer for 25 minutes.
3. Next, stir in the cream, chopped kale, and cayenne pepper. Bring to a boil and remove from the heat.

Before serving, freshly grate Parmesan Reggiani Cheese over each bowl of freshly ladled soup.

Olive Garden uses Russet potatoes for Zuppa. However, golden potatoes work just as good.

Kale freezes very well so defiantly pull it out of the freezer for soups like this!

To Freeze Kale: wash and pat dry your kale. Strip the kale leaves off of the stem and chop coarsely with a knife. You can also tear off the kale leaves. Place into a freezer bag and freeze. One bunch of kale is typically used for one recipe.

Keep up-to 4 days in the fridge.

Since bacon and ham are both cured and made from pork the two different meats can easily be swapped out for each other. If I have ham or Canadian bacon I’ll use it instead. Since I almost always try to keep a stash of my oven-baked freezer bacon I can use that too.

Each ladle of soup is equivalent to 8 oz per serving. My soup ladle is big!