Zuppa Toscana
Sausage, spinach, and potato soup with a little cream.
Ingredients
- 400 g Italian sausage
- 3 Potatoes
- 200 g Spinach
- 1 Onion
- 3 cloves Garlic
- 120 ml Heavy cream
- 1200 ml Chicken stock
- 2 tbsp Extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 tsp Salt
Method
- Dice the potatoes into roughly 2 cm pieces.
- Heat the oil in a heavy pot over medium-high. Crumble in the sausage and brown 5 minutes, breaking it up, until well coloured.
- While the sausage browns: dice the onion fine and mince the garlic.
- Drop the heat to medium. Add the onion and garlic to the rendered sausage fat. Sweat 3 minutes until the onion is soft and translucent.
- Add the diced potato, stock, and salt. Bring to a simmer, then cover and cook 18 minutes until the potatoes are tender.
- Stir in the spinach and let it wilt, about a minute. Pull off the heat and stir in the cream. Taste for salt.
- Ladle into bowls and serve hot.
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About Zuppa Toscana
Zuppa Toscana is a rustic Tuscan-style soup built on three anchoring ingredients: crumbled Italian sausage, tender potatoes, and dark leafy greens, brought together in a lightly creamy broth. Though its name simply means "Tuscan soup," the version most home cooks know is a hearty, restaurant-popularized take rather than a strict regional recipe, and it leans on the deep savory backbone of pork sausage browned until well coloured. That browning step matters: the sausage renders its fat into the pot, and the onion and garlic are then sweated in that rendered fat, so every spoonful carries the seasoned richness of the meat rather than tasting like plain broth with add-ins.
The result is comforting and substantial without being heavy-handed. The potatoes simmer until soft enough to give the broth body, the greens wilt in at the end to keep their freshness, and just a final stir of cream rounds everything into something silky rather than rich. It eats like a full meal in a bowl, best on a cold evening with crusty bread to mop the broth, and it comes together in about forty minutes because the prep overlaps with the cooking. Serving six from a single pot, it is the kind of soup that reheats well and rewards a generous grind of black pepper or a shower of grated Parmesan at the table.
Zuppa Toscana: frequently asked questions
How many calories are in Zuppa Toscana?
A serving has about 449 calories — 17.5g protein, 26.3g carbs, 30.5g fat, 2.7g fiber. Figures are estimated from the ingredient amounts and will shift with your portions and brands.
Is Zuppa Toscana gluten-free?
Based on its ingredients, Zuppa Toscana has no gluten-containing components, so it's naturally gluten-free — as always, check that any packaged ingredients you use are certified gluten-free to be safe.
Is Zuppa Toscana dairy-free?
Not as written — it uses Heavy cream. Swapping it for a plant-based alternative makes it dairy-free.
How long does Zuppa Toscana take to make?
About 40 minutes start to finish, but only around 18 of those are hands-on — the rest is largely unattended cooking time you can step away from. In the Homecooked app the timers and parallel steps are sequenced for you so the hands-on part feels even shorter.
How many servings does Zuppa Toscana make?
This recipe makes 6 servings. In the app you can scale it up or down and the ingredient amounts adjust automatically.