Zuppa Toscana - The At Home Version!

Last Saturday afternoon the girls and I went to The Olive Garden for lunch and - for probably the 12th time - I said that if I could just find a recipe for it, I'd make my favorite Zuppa Toscana soup at home so that we could have it more often. Amanda likes it just as much as I do so I finally went in search of a recipe online.

Turns out there were quite a few from which to choose but none of them sounded 'quite right' as I couldn't for the life of me remember there being bacon in the soup. However, every recipe I looked at called for bacon in varying amounts so I figured that had to be right, right? I ended up using a little of this and a little of that from each of the recipes that I found and eventually ended up with my own recipe of sorts. When I made the soup I doubled the recipe as the way I look at it you can never have enough Zuppa Toscana and I knew Amanda would be looking for leftovers if it came out as well as the soup we love at The Olive Garden.

If you'd like to try it, the recipe I used was:

• 1 quart water
• 2 14.5 oz cans of chicken broth
• 4 medium-size russet potatoes
• 1/2 medium onion
• 1-1/2 to 2 tsp minced garlic
• 3 pieces of cooked crisp bacon, diced
• 1 pound spicy Italian sausage
• 3 cups chopped kale
• 1 cup heavy cream
• salt and pepper


• Cook the Italian sausage, crumbling it as you go (I used the non-link variety); drain and set aside.
• Lightly saute the onion in the same pan you just cooked the sausage in until soft.
• In a large pot, add water, chicken broth, garlic, sauteed onions, and potatoes; cook over medium heat until potatoes are tender.
• Add cooked sausage and cooked diced bacon to the pot and let simmer for another ten minutes.
• Add kale and heavy cream to pot; season with salt & pepper; heat for about 5 to 10 minutes; serve to rave reviews!

This was my finished product and Amanda declared it to be exactly like the soup at The Olive Garden; the only things missing were the grated Romano cheese on top and the breadsticks! Because Amanda dislikes onions almost as much as she dislikes needles, after sauteing the onions I put them through my mini-food processor so Amanda couldn't see them floating in her soup and she never even knew they were there until I told her after she'd eaten her first bowl-full!

Unfortunately Jamie didn't much care for the soup as she thought it was a little too spicy for her tastebuds and she's also not much of an Italian sausage fan but I thought it actually came out pretty close to the real thing. I think the next time I make it, I'm actually going to throw in a couple extra potatoes and see how it comes out and I might toss in another handful of kale, too, but other than that I'm going to give myself a pat on the back and call it buon abbastanza rammendato per una prima prova!*

*pretty darned good for a first try!