Olive Garden's Zuppa Toscana Soup

[Rae1889]

I am in love with this soup but havent been to live garden in about a year. So I was looking through some youtube videos and stuff and someone (aglanceatmyworld) had posted a recipe for it. So I tried it last night and it is so so good! Thought I would share as I am pretty sure it is entirely E friendly (??)

So Ingredients:

1 small to medium onion chopped fine (for your liking)
3-4 russet potatoes washed and sliced in half length wise
1-2 cloves of garlic pressed or minced (use 2 if they are small)
A couple handfuls of greens (you can use swiss char, kale or spinach)
1lb of your favourite Italian sausage with casings removed (or just use ground pork and season to your liking)
6-7 cups of water
3 tablespoons chicken flavouring (one that suits your dietary need or substitute 1/3 of the water for chicken stock)
1 cup milk (or almond milk which is AMAZING in this recipe)
**optional use a few slices of bacon cooked and crumbled

1) Fry up your sausage meat until fully cooked and set aside in another bowl.
2) Fry up your onion until it starts to go soft,
3) Add the garlic and the greens you chose. stir for 30 seconds (DO NOT BURN THE GARLIC. it tastes terribly bitter if you do)
4) Add the water and let it boil
5) while the water is boiling slice your potatoes into thin half moon shapes
6) drop them in the water with the cooked sausage and cover (vented) for about 5 minutes or until potatoes are cooked
7) stir in the milk and enjoy!

This is about as close to a dead ringer as it can get for this soup. The only varience will be depending on the flavour of sausage you use. I would not recommend honey garlic or bbq sausage with this. and would stick with Italian. We have had 2 bowls for supper last night and 2 bowls for lunch today each and still have tonnes left!

Dont add salt or pepper to the soup until after the sausage is in there as the spice from that will go through the soup as well.

Hope you enjoy!

[Nakamova]

Sounds yummy! I love to cook soups, since there tends to be a wide margin for error when cooking them...

[Endless]

Yummmm!

I'm going to make it with Tofurky Italian Sausage.

[RobinN]

I would be really careful with "chicken flavoring"... most likely a MSG stand in.

[Bernard]

I would be really careful with "chicken flavoring"... most likely a MSG stand in.

I would just use vegetable stock from my local Whole Foods (no MSG or other nasty chemicals).

... slice your potatoes into thin half moon shapes ...

I'm not sure what this means. Would it matter if I just diced the potato into bite sized cubes?

[Meetz1064]

you should be able to dice the potato into cubes--the idea of the thin slices is for the potato to absorb the flavors a little more than cubes would (supposedly) because they're thinner. However the cubes will have a nice texture to them, and should be able to pick up flavor just fine IMHO.

[RobinN]

I agree, I like little cubes of potato, that fit into my spoon. I also buy the 365 brand of broth from Whole Foods. I buy about 6 at a time. It is a staple in my pantry.

[Nikkal]

whole foods cracks me up- they advertise their broth as 'no sugar added' but then they add 'evaporated cane juice'...which is sugar!

too funny

(especially since there's NO reason to add sugar to broth - that's what the vegies are for)

looks like a yummy soup though!

<---- put soup here please!

[Endless]

Trader Joes has pretty good veg broth and it doesn't add sugar. Love trader joe's for their soups in a carton, too. Lots on hand at my house for days I'm either too sick or too tired to cook.