Marni's Organized Mess: Zuppa Toscana

Monday, January 24, 2011

Zuppa Toscana

Have you entered my giveaway yet?

If you follow me on Facebook, you likely already caught a sneak peak at this fabulous soup I made this past week.

It's called, can you guess? Zuppa Toscana!

So my friend Natalie, who also gave me the Macaroni and Cheese recipe, shared this recipe on my Mom's group. Well, I never really check it, so I didn't notice of course. But then, Laura, Seasyn, and Brooke all posted it on their Facebook feeds and it was completely unbearable to admire these photos without making it immediately.

I took bits and pieces from each of their personal preferences to put into ours.

Here is the recipe I used with other options in parenthesis.

1lb Italian sausage
2 cans chicken broth
1 cup water
1 small onion diced (or 1/4 cup)
4 big hunks of cauliflower (or 3 large russet potatoes)
3-5 cloves garlic (I used 3 that were rather large)
8 slices of bacon crumbled
1 cup heavy whipping cream
8 oz container of cut mushrooms
2 cups spinach (or 1 cup - or kale)

I browned the sausage first, the majority cooked throughout. Then I sauteed the garlic for a few minutes with it. I threw those in the crock pot with the diced onions first.

Next I threw in the cauliflower all diced up.

I added the water, chicken broth and whipping cream and left it on HIGH for 3 hours. You can vary the time I am sure.

Then I cooked up the bacon

let it cool and scissored it into bits.

I added the mushrooms about an hour before it was time to eat. But I saved the spinach and bacon for the last 10 minutes. It doesn't take long to cook spinach and I didn't want to cook out all of the nutrients. I left it on top too, to basically steam it until it was almost ready.