Monday, January 03, 2011

Olive Garden's Zuppa Toscana

K.C. and I had this for dinner one night when we were over at a friend's house and we absolutely loved it. Since I have been back in Logan finishing school, I didn't feel justified making a ton of soup just for me so being home for the holidays was the perfect excuse to break out the recipe and try making it for ourselves.


Zuppa Toscana
1 lb Italian sausage
1 1/2 t crushed red pepper (skip if using hot sausage)
1 large yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
10 c water
5 t chicken bouillon
3 large potatoes, halved and sliced
1/2 bunch kale
1 c heavy whipping cream
1/4 lb bacon, cooked and crumbled

1. Brown Italian sausage in a large pot along with red pepper. Remove meat from pot and drain most of the grease.

2. Put onion and garlic into same pot and saute until onions are soft. Add water and bouillon and bring to a boil over high heat.

3. Reduce heat and add potatoes. Cook until soft (our potatoes were sliced really thin (~1/8 of an inch) and I only cooked them for about 5 minutes at which time they were perfect).

4. Prepare kale by removing stem from the leaf (it is rather chewy otherwise) and tearing into salad size pieces. Add to pot and cook until tender.

5. Return sausage to pot and pour in whipping cream. Heat through making sure not to boil or else the cream will curdle.

6. Serve with bacon on top as a garnish.

You can put the bacon in the soup along with the sausage, but we found that the bacon gets soft and loses its crunch so we will be simply putting it on top from now on. We also decided to double the recipe since we had no idea what to do with the rest of the kale. It makes a ton of soup (wouldn't all fit in our 8 quart pot) but we are definitely happy to have leftovers! Enjoy and let me know what you think if you try making it yourself!

7 comments:

Sarah said...

Jeff is going to love this. Thanks for sharing!

K.C. said...

This was so delicious. Trust me I was there! I love it. And if you want a little bit of spiciness, use hot Italian sausage!

Carolyn Howell said...

Hot delicious soup! Perfect for a cold winter evening. We'll have to give it a try. When can we come over?
xoxo :o}

Anonymous said...

I didn't know you had a blog! I actually have one too, but I need your email to invite you to it. You can just facebook it to me :). Hopefully you'll post more though :) (This is Melissa Lewis by the way from Physiology)

Stephie said...

mmm i love soup! i'm going to have to try this one out for sure!

K.C. said...

Can't wait until you get back - we can make more of this! Except not too much or I'll end up looking like I do in that picture you've used as your header!

K.C. said...

PLEASE OH PLEASE change that picture on your header. And then delete this comment :)