If you love Olive Garden Zuppa Toscana, you’ll go nuts for this Zuppa Toscana copycat recipe. It’s chock-full of potatoes, kale, bacon and sausage, and it’s just as good or even better than Olive Garden’s Zuppa.
I’m a bit of a soup-a-holic. I love making homemade soup, and I rarely pass up an opportunity to order soup when I’m in a restaurant. My very favourite restaurant soup is Olive Garden’s Zuppa Toscana.
Because we don’t have an Olive Garden nearby, I don’t get their Zuppa Toscana often. Thankfully, a good friend of mine, gave me this copycat recipe for Olive Garden Zuppa Toscana a few years ago, so now I can make it at home whenever I want.
Quite honestly, I think this copycat recipe is actually better than Olive Garden’s Zuppa. I’d be interested to know if you agree, so if you make it, please leave a comment below, and let me know.
In case you’ve never had Olive Garden’s Zuppa Toscana Soup, let me enlighten you. (If you’re familiar with it, feel free to skip straight to the recipe card at the bottom of the post.)
What is Zuppa Toscana?
Zuppa is the Italian word for soup, and Toscana is the Italian word for the region of Tuscany, so translated literally, Zuppa Toscana means “Tuscan Soup”.
Zuppa Toscana is a traditional Italian soup made with a kale or spinach, onions, celery, carrots, beans, olive oil, toasted bread, spices and bacon.
This Olive Garden Zuppa Toscana recipe is a cream based soup, chock-full of spicy sausage, bacon, potatoes, onions and kale. It’s so rich and flavourful my mouth literally starts watering whenever I think of it.
The spicy sausage lends some heat to the recipe, but if you’d prefer less spice, you can use mildly spiced sausage or even regular breakfast sausages. Your zuppa will still be delicious because, sausage, bacon, potato and kale… How can that combination NOT be good?
If you love the Olive Garden’s Zuppa, this copycat recipe will not disappoint you. Promise.
Ok, let’s make Zuppa Toscana soup!
Zuppa Toscana Copycat Recipe
Ingredients:
- 1 lb spicy ground sausage (I often just chop up 3 jumbo sausages. I like the “medium-spicy” ones, but use mild if you’re opposed to heat)
- 1 large white onion, diced
- 4 slices fried, chopped bacon
- 3 cloves garlic, crushed
- 8 cups water
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 5 cubes of chicken bouillon (or as much liquid bouillon as you’d need for 9 cups of liquid water)
- 3 large potatoes, peeled and cubed
- 2 cups fresh kale, chopped
How to make Olive Garden Zuppa Toscana with Kale, Cream, Sausage, Bacon and Potatoes
- Sauté your sausage in a large pot until it’s cooked through. Drain the grease, and remove the sausage, and pop it into the refrigerator. You won’t be needing it for a while.
- Leave a little bit of grease in the pot (maybe a tbsp or so).
- Now you’re going to fry your bacon in this pot. You want to use the pot that you just cooked your sausage in because it has all that flavourful sausage goodness in there.
- Sauté your bacon until it’s half-way cooked, and then add your onions and garlic, and continue to cook over LOW heat until the bacon is fully cooked and the onions and garlic are soft.
- Add a bit of your water to deglaze your pot, and then add the rest of the water and the bouillon, and bring it all to a boil.
- Toss in your cubed potatoe, and cook over medium heat until the potatoes are cooked. This generally takes about a half-hour.
- Stir in the cream.
- Add your sausage and chopped kale, and heat through.
- Serve your amazing Zuppa Toscana with a loaf of homemade bread or my easy bread-machine dinner rolls
Frequently Asked Questions about Zuppa Toscana:
You can find the nutritional value for this Zuppa Toscana recipe in the printable recipe card below.
Is Zuppa Toscana Gluten Free?
Yes, this recipe for Zuppa Toscana is gluten-free.
One serving of this zuppa contains 14g of carbs. You can reduce the carbs by substituting cooked cauliflower for the potatoes.
Yes, I freeze zuppa toscana all the time. The texture of the potatoes may change once frozen.
Yes, you can substitute all or a portion of the heavy cream in this zuppa toscana recipe for half and half or regular milk. Your soup won’t be quite as rich, but it will still be delicious.
Soup’s on! Or, maybe I should say “Zuppa’s on!”
And remember to let me know what you think of this zuppa recipe!
In your opinion, is it as good as Olive Garden’s Zuppa Toscana, or is it even better?
More great homemade soup recipes
Zuppa Toscana – Olive Garden Copycat Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 lb spicy ground sausage (or 4 large sausages, casing removed)
- 1 large white onion diced
- 4 slices fried chopped bacon
- 3 cloves garlic crushed
- 8 cups water
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 5 cubes of chicken bouillon
- 3 large potatoes peeled and cubed
- 2 cups fresh kale chopped
Instructions
- Sauté your sausage in a large pot until it’s cooked through. Drain the grease, and remove the sausage, and pop it into the refrigerator. You won’t be needing it for a while.
- Leave a little bit of grease in the pot (maybe a tbsp or so).
- Now you’re going to fry your bacon in this pot. You want to use the pot that you just cooked your sausage in because it has all that flavourful sausage goodness in there.
- Sauté your bacon until it’s half-way cooked, and then add your onions and garlic, and continue to cook over LOW heat until the bacon is fully cooked and the onions and garlic are soft.
- Add a bit of your water to deglaze your pot, and then add the rest of the water and the bouillon, and bring it all to a boil.
- Toss in your cubed potatoes, and cook over medium heat until the potatoes are cooked. This generally takes about a half-hour.
- Stir in the cream.
- Add your sausage and chopped kale, and heat through.
Nutrition
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Jackie is a mom, wife, home daycare provider, and the creative spirit behind Happy Hooligans. She specializes in kids’ crafts and activities, easy recipes, and parenting. She began blogging in 2011, and today, Happy Hooligans inspires more than 2 million parents, caregivers and Early Years Professionals all over the globe.
Celeste Lane
Just to be clear, 9 cups of water and 5 bouillion cubes?
happyhooligans
That’s right, Celeste. For the bouillon part, it’s 9 cups water, and 5 cubes. Or if you’re using liquid bouillon, however much the label says to add to 9 cups water.
Becky Berna
This looks to me to be a question of the size bouillon cube being used! I have some for 1 cube=. 1 cup and others that are bigger and 1 cube = 2 cups! My guess this recipe is calling for the larger bouillon cubes.
I just use 9 cups of my own homemade broth.
My 16 year old Granddaughter loves this soup! Says it’s better than Olive Gardens! I agree!
Channa Griffin
As a huge fan of Olive Gardens’ soup, it does taste exactly like it. However having said that, this soup is fabulous! Thank you for sharing the recipe!
Desiree
Hello! I’m so glad I found this recipe as I am a huge fan of OG’s soup! This is my favorite!! Thank you so much I cannot wait to make this! 🙂 I was just wondering how many servings this makes? Thank you again!
happyhooligans
If you look at the ingredients, is 8 cups water, 1 cup milk. Those are 8 oz. cups, so that will give you an idea of the amount of liquid that goes into the soup. So you have 9 cups of liquid and then all the goodies in there. I’d say you could easily feed 10 people.
Deb
Could I substitute fresh spinach for the kale?
happyhooligans
I imagine you probably could, Deb. I’ve never tried it, but I think the two are similar.
Kat Gerry
Oh. My. God. I’ve never tried the Olive Garden version – we don’t have one here. But this soup is fricking awesome! I even swapped out the heavy cream for 1% milk (figured there was enough fat in it already) and it’s still fantastic. The broth has so much flavour. And, having never tried kale before, I now know that I do like it. Thanks for this recipe!
Tami
Oh my, thank you for posting this. Made it tonight and it was just as awesome as OG’s. I couldn’t find just kale so I used a baby spinach and baby kale mix and could tell the difference.
happyhooligans
Well that is good to know because the other day I put “small kale” on the grocery list, meaning a small head of Kale, and my husband picked up BABY kale thinking small=baby. Hahaha. I wasn’t sure if the baby kale would work in the soup because it’s so much more delicate than regular kale. I might just give it a try now! I’m glad you mentioned it!
Geanette
Love this so much. I am now addicted!!
happyhooligans
Perhaps you missed this, Fredo: “A few of my friends and many of my Facebook followers, however, are CRAZY for the Olive Garden’s Zuppa Toscana, and they claim that this homemade kale, sausage and potato soup is a dead-ringer for for the Olive Garden’s “Zuppa”. Some claim the homemade version is even BETTER.”
Jeanine M
In the introduction here you state that this soup has beans in it but I don’t see it in the recipe ingredients.
What type of beans and in what quantity?
Jackie Currie
No, there are no beans in my Zuppa Toscana, Jeanine. Are you thinking about my Potato, Lentil and Bacon soup? You’ll find that recipe here: https://happyhooligans.ca/lentil-soup-with-potatoes-bacon-and-veg/
Becky Berna
This recipe is one of my Granddaughters favorite things I make !