Zuppa Toscana

I love this soup. It’s tasty, it’s easy to make, it’s filling, and it’s good leftover. All of the boxes are checked with this one.

Jacob (and Beautycounter HAH) gifted me a Le Creuset dutch over for Christmas, and this recipe was the first thing I made in it. I follow Studio McGee on Instagram, and she shared this Zuppa Toscana recipe, and it just looked so delicious.

Spoiler alert: It tastes as delicious as it looks. And it’s pretty easy too. 😉

I wanted to share this here on my blog so I can reference it easily, but I also want it in my list of go to recipes for my friends too, because it seriously is a winner all the way around, even if you aren’t doing a Whole30 and just want to make a tasty soup.

Check out the Ingredients and How-To below, and maybe even pop over to the 40Aprons website for a lot of other great recipes too!

Ingredients

If you are wanting to make your own Italian sausage… honestly, I suppose I technically cheated on this meal during our Whole30, because I bought the H-E-B in house ground Italian sausage instead of making my own haha… it wasn’t that bad regarding the ingredients, I felt like it was very close to being compliant, and with three little boys running me ragged, sometimes something has to give!

If you have the time (and energy), it really isn’t that hard to make your own! Just combine the ingredients below in a bowl and mix well. You could also just combine all ingredients in the saucepan and stir it all in when browning the meat.

• 1 pound ground pork
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 tablespoon fresh chopped parsley or 2 teaspoons dried
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1/4 teaspoon ground fennel seed optional
• pinch dried oregano
• pinch dried thyme

For the soup…

• 4 slices Whole30-compliant bacon cut into about 1/2″ pieces
• 1 pound Italian sausage made from above recipe or storebought
• 1/2 teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes
• 4 medium yellow potatoes about 1 pound 3 ounces, diced into bite-sized pieces
• 1 medium white or yellow onion diced
• 2 tablespoons garlic minced, about 4 cloves
• 4 cups chicken stock
• 1/2 bunch kale stems removed and leaves chopped, 4 cups (I chopped this very small, otherwise it kind of overwhelmed the soup!)
• 1 can coconut milk
• Salt and pepper to taste

What to do:

1. In a Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed medium pot over medium heat, add Italian sausage and sprinkle crushed red pepper flakes over. Break up the meat and brown it, then drain it and set it to the side. (I actually cooked the sausage in a separate pan, so I could go ahead and start cooking the bacon in my dutch over as you will see next!)
2. Cook the bacon pieces in the same Dutch oven over medium heat until crisp, about 5-10 minutes. Remove the crisp bacon and set aside – don’t get rid of the bacon fat!
3. Stir in the onions and garlic in the bacon fat, cook until onions are soft and translucent, about 5 minutes.
4. Pour the chicken broth into the Dutch oven with the onions and garlic, and bring to a boil over high heat.
5. Add the potatoes, and boil until fork tender, about 10-20 minutes.
6. Reduce the heat to medium and stir in the coconut milk and the cooked sausage; heat through.
7. Add the bacon and the kale into the soup just before serving and cook until the kale is bright green and softened.
8. Add salt and pepper to taste.

While I was working on this soup, the boys were playing the new Headbanz game I had grabbed at Target! You wear these headbands and select a card, and then have to ask everyone questions and try to guess what your card says. We just laughed so much tonight with it! They have loved it, so just thought I would drop that in here as well!

We also had an amazing winter storm blow through this week! We could not believe how much SNOW we got! It was beautiful and just felt like the most amazing gift from our Creator! Jackson has been saying for over a year now that he wished it would snow here, so I told him that God must have heard his request!

I love these little brothers all bundled up! We learned very quickly that we are truly not equipped for this kind of weather haha! We made the best of it though, took lots of breaks and did LOTS of laundry! (Which you can see on my couch in the picture above haha, no shame in my game! That’s real life if you ask me!)

Jacey had a BLAST. She was so funny running around in the snow, taking bites out of snowballs thrown at her, just living her best life. It was really sweet the memories we made together this week.

OK, that’s all for now! Make the soup! 😉