Zuppa Toscana Recipe {Copycat Olive Garden Recipe} Gonna Want Seconds (2024)

This rich, velvety, zuppa toscana recipe is an Olive Garden copycat that is loaded with even more potatoes, bacon, and of course sausage than the restaurant version! Now, this is comfort food your family will Love!

Honestly, before I got this recipe down, I’d go to Olive Garden just for this soup! I’ve always loved going to the Olive Garden. It’s the perfect place to take the family. It has a kid-friendly environment and, even better, kid-friendly food so they’re happy too.

Plus, there’s a great selection of pasta, so hubby’s happy. Then, factor in all the delicious soups, breadsticks, and the fact that I can get a decent glass of wine, and I’m happy!!! Everyone always gets to order something they love. Pasta, soup, salad and ohhhh the breadsticks! But my all-time favorite thing on the whole menu has to be the zuppa toscana.

This soup, in my ever so humble opinion, is even more delicious than the one you can order at the restaurant. It has all the same delicious ingredients, but even more of them. Rich, creamy, delicious soup loaded with chunks of sausage, bacon, and potatoes.

It’s quick and easy enough to make even on a weeknight. You can have the whole thing prepared and ready to serve in just about the time it would take you to load the family into the car and drive over to your local Olive Garden! Forget about putting your name in at the hostess stand waiting for a table and paying the bill! No, not you my friend, because now you can make this awesome soup right at home!

What are your favorite Olive Garden Recipes? We have more Olive Garden copycat recipes for you! Try our Olive Garden chicken alfredo, tortellini al forno, Olive Garden breadsticks, or our five cheese ziti al forno ♥

Zuppa Toscana Ingedients:

• Italian Sausage: I use mild but feel free to use spicy if you’d like.
  • I used sweet with 1/2 teaspoonof red pepper flakes. My hubby doesn’t like much of any spicy heat soI have to keep the heat down. If you like things with more heat this recipe is easy to adjust to suit your taste.
  • Use spicy sausage and add more red pepper flakes to taste. If you use spicy sausage instead of the mild, your broth will take on an orange hue. It’s the spices that are used in making the spicy version of sausage mixed with the chicken broth and cream and give it a bit of color.
• Red Pepper Flakes: Add more or less to adjust the heat level to your taste.
• Fennel Seeds: Enhances the flavor of the Italian sausage.
• Bacon
• Onion: I use yellow. White will work as well.
• Garlic: I always use fresh, never the stuff that comes in a jar.
• Chicken Broth: I like low sodium.
• Potatoes:I use russet potatoes. You can use red potatoes or Yukon gold if you’d prefer.
  • To peel, or not to peel…I peel, but you certainly don’t need to. I peelmy potatoes because I don’t like how the soup looks when the peel separates from the potato after they’re cooked. Leaving the skins on the potatoes is certainly easier and a lot healthier for you!
  • I like to cut the potatoes into fairly large chunks. As they simmer, they break down a bit. Ilike to keep the rustic feel of this soup by keeping the pieces about 1/2 inch chunks.
• Heavy Whipping Cream: Just enough to create a luscious mouth feel.
• Spinach:The Zuppa Toscana recipe served at the Olive Garden has kale in it. My family prefers the taste and texture of spinach so that’s, of course, what I use.
  • If you want to use kale, I suggest you cook it longer than I do the spinach. I’d add it to the soup after the potatoes have cooked for about 10 minutes.
  • Spinach is a lot more tender than kale and is also delicious eaten raw. In this recipe, the spinach is coarsely chopped and just heated up, but not cooked. If you want the spinach cooked more, just add it any time after you add the cream to the soup.

Storing + Freezing + Make-Ahead

• How Long Can You Keep This In The Fridge?Your better than olive garden zuppa toscana will stay good in the fridge for up to 4 days.
• Can You Freeze This?I know there’s a lot of mixed advice about freezing cream soups. I do not freeze cream soups. They tend to separate and the texture changes.
• Make-Ahead Tips:You can prep the veggies and store them in a container or Ziploc until you’re ready for them. That will save you the most time. To save a bit of time overall, I chop the onion and mince the garlic while the sausage is browning. Then, I peel and cut the potatoes while I’m cooking the bacon
• Food Safety:If you’d like more info on food safety check out thislink.

Serving Recommendations

We like this served with our favorite garlic bread and a simple garden salad dressed with an easy balsamic vinaigrette or our elegant Mediterranean salad.

How To Make Zuppa Toscana

1. Brown the sausage in a Dutch oven, then set it aside when it’s browned.Add the bacon to the undrainedDutch oven and cook it.
2. Drain all but 2 tablespoons of the fat from the pan add the onions and garlic along to the cooked bacon and saute them until they are soft and the onions are translucent. Dig down to the bottom of the pan while the veggies are cooking and scrape up any of the brown bits on the bottom of the Dutch oven. Those precious bits will give the soup lots of flavor!
3. Add the chicken broth and potatoes and simmer them until their fork is tender, then add the cream and spinach. Now you have a bowl of yum that just might knock your socks off!!

Recipe Variations

• Lighten Up!- If you’re looking to make a healthier version Zuppa Toscana recipe.

Try our recipe and make the following substitutions and modifications to the recipe:

• • 1 1/2 pound Turkey Italian sausage for the regular Italian sausage
  • Turkey bacon for the regular bacon
  • 2 cups low-fat milk for the 1 cup heavy cream
  • Use fat-free and low-sodium chicken broth
  • Add extra kale or spinach to increase vitamins, minerals, and fiber.
  • Add 1-2 cups chopped (fairly small), and cooked broccoli. While it’s not in the original recipe, the flavors would blend very nicely and it would significantly increase the health benefits.

• Make It Paleo- Looking for a Paleofied version of this soup? Well, I have a few suggestions:
  • Replace the potatoes with chopped cauliflower or cubed sweet potatoes
  • Replace the cream with 1 can of full-fat coconut milk

How To Make Zuppa Toscana In The Crockpot

1. Follow the recipe instructions below for steps 1-3. In those steps, you cook the sausage, red pepper, bacon, onion, and garlic on the stovetop.
2. Add the cooked sausage, red pepper, bacon, onion, and garlic to a crockpot.Then add the chicken broth and diced potatoes.
3. Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours or high 4-6 hours or until the potatoes are tender when pierced with a fork.
4. Add the heavy cream and spinach and cover and cook on high for 30 minutes or until heated through.

More Italian Soups and Recipes

• Italian Chicken Soup
• Chicken Gnocchi Soup
• Pasta E fa*gioli Soup
• Lasagne Soup
• Chicken Tortellini Soup
• Tomato Basil Soup
  
• Chicken Florentine Soup
• Italian Sausage Soup
• Creamy Chicken Tortellini Soup
• Spinach Tortellini Soup

Tried This Recipe?

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