Its Friday It Must Be Soup! Feb 3rd is Zuppa Toscana

It's time for soup and I wanted something like white bean with kale and was about to just make a pot of that when I found this recipe for zuppa toscana on Eclectic Recipes and pinned it. It seems that this is a copy cat recipe for the soup they serve at Olive garden. I don't think I have been to an Olive Garden so I can't vouch for it based on any actual experience with soup from the garden of olives but it sounded yummy to me. To be honest, the only thing I know about Olive Garden is that it was rumoured that they didn't use garlic, which is a really weird thing for any Italian chain to admit to. What's next, no tomatoes?




Anyway, I made a few small changes - I halved the recipe technically but I upped the liquid, used more stock than water and I used mild sausages and just added a drizzle of chili oil to mine. It's a bit of extra work to cut the potatoes into the quarters to make triangles but it was a nice change from dicing, which is what I always do to my potatoes so I am sure the potatoes were happy to be given a chance to do something new too.


In the end, this soup is pretty good but it still needs a little something, maybe some fresh thyme? It's a good, solid soup that comes together really quickly and the potatoes were a nice change from the more expected white beans.




Zuppa Toscana
adapted from Eclectic Recipes

olive oil
about 300g mild italian sausages, casings removed
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 cups chicken stock
1 cup water
1 large or 2 smaller yellow fleshed potatoes, peeled, sliced in 1/8" slices and quarter into triangles
2 cups kale, chopped
1/2 cup milk or heavy cream
(chili oil or chili flakes to serve with it if you like it a bit more spicy)

heat your soup pot and drizzle with a small glug of olive oil. Add the onion and the sausage meat and brown, breaking up the sausage so its more crumbled than lumpy. When that is cooked, add the garlic and sauté for another 2 or 3 minutes. Now add the chicken stock and the water, bring to a boil and then it's time to add the potatoes. Bring it back to a nice simmer and continue to cook until the potatoes are done, or about 15 minutes.
At that point, add the kale and I just put the lid on the soup, turned the heat off and let it sit for five minutes before I stirred in the milk. If you are using milk and not cream don't let it come to a boil again or it will do things that will make you unhappy.