Why spend your money at Olive Garden when you can make it at home. RECIPE: Zuppa Toscana

http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1648,135179-248192,00.html

OLIVE GARDEN ZUPPA TOSCANA

1 lb ground Italian sausage
1½ tsp crushed red peppers
1 large diced white onion
4 tbsp bacon pieces
2 tsp garlic puree
10 cups water
5 cubes of chicken bouillon
1 cup heavy cream
1 lb sliced russet potatoes, or about 3 large potatoes
¼ of a bunch of kale

Sautee Italian sausage and crushed red pepper in pot. Drain excess fat, refrigerate while you prepare other ingredients. In the same pan, sautee bacon, onions and garlic for approxiamtly 15 mins. or until the onions are soft. Mix together the chicken bouillon and water, then add it to the onions, bacon and garlic. Cook until boilin Add potatoes and cook until soft, about half an hour. Add heavy cream and cook until thoughouly heated. Stir in the sausage. Add kale just before serving. Delicious!

Submitted by: Olive Garden

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Thanks OG..not dropping a dime at your establishment just for the soup.

Cheap chain restaurant garbage - I tried it once and almost threw up

Plus they lie about fats/calories, etc.

Thankfully I'm 1/2 Italian and can make my own family recipes much easier, cheaper and better tasting than the garbage they peddle

n/t

I live in a neighborhood where there are 5 amazing, old-school, world class Italian restaurants within a few blocks of my house. And another 20 or so pizzarias and excellent hole-in-the-wall family restaurants.

I went to an Olive Garden ONCE, and I think it was the most disgusting, frozen, bland corporate crap I have ever eaten. I don't have to get on the boycott Olive Garden bandwagon, because I would never step foot again in one of those places as it is...

Olive Garden is "Italian Food" for people who don't know what real Italian food tastes like. Their money, their choice.

I will be doing a photo shoot at an Italian restaurant in San Jose tomorrow...REAL Italian, family-owned, over four decades in business. I'm designing their Web Site. I will post the photos here tomorrow...stay tuned.

:toast:

I want to throw shit at my TV every time one of their commercials comes on. I'm growing awfully weary of the use of Italian stereotypes, and Olive Garden is a grade-A offender.

Their food also has more salt than the Atlantic and Pacific combined.

...Ragu, or whoever the hell it was.

Italian cooking is an art. It took me YEARS to get to the point where I can assemble everything and add it in at the right time, by eyesight and not by measure, and have it taste consistent from meal to meal.

Same thing for Chinese cooking. You have to approach these cuisines with respect. When you do, the secrets reveal themselves. As the old saying goes, "When the student is ready, the master appears."

:toast:

I know I'm still tweaking my family's marinara recipe. I've got a basic notion in mind, but it's the little things that I fine tune. Dice the veggies or leave them chunky? Sweat those veggies or saute them first? Use sugar to nullify the acidity or use a different kind of tomato? Are there other non-traditional spices that can be added to round out the flavor?

I've been doing it for about 10 years and I'll probably continue tweaking it my whole life.

My pesto, on the other hand, is pretty well set. :-)

I have only eaten there a handful of times in my life, and none recently (within this decade), but I do remember that soup. So thanks!

:thumbsup:

I guess I'm the first one to reply who happens to like going to Olive Gradens! Love those breadsticks and the fact that I don't have to cook!

....and who is doing the cooking. There are two Olive Gardens near my home - one is excellent, the other one not good at all. I LOVE the ZUPPA TOSCANA at one restraunt...hate it at the other.

I like a lot of Italian places better, many chains kick their ass, but my favorite Italian place is a locally owned place which Olive Garden's mass produced fare can't possibly compare to.

They need all the advertising venues they can get, too bad they are really stupid. If they want right-wingers only, well they are after the people who don't have good taste to begin with.

by one of the big corporations and if they're big, they are doomed in my opinion because of genetic modifiers, antibiotics, glutamates - in other words, I think they poison us.

i love to use lots of fresh kale-very little meat...yum

Are you having guests over you don't like?

... http://www.snopes.com/business/consumer/cookie.asp ...

... not to mention a Seinfeld episode: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0697782/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soup_nazi

soup served at OG. Trouble is, it's lousy soup. It's just that people aren't used to real soups, and it's probably better than Campbell's, so it's terrific to a lot of people.

It's a pity, though, that swill passes for cuisine in chain restaurants. The home cook can make a very nice soup, but most don't bother to take the time. They'll be happy with this imitation of an Italian Zuppa. More's the pity.

... it's that the recipe's is Olive Garden's and it's being made available without them being able to profit from it.

I went into an Olive Garden once..... and that was enough.
The wife and I ordered 2 dishes. They tasted like they'd been overcooked once, and then reheated. the chicken, was brittle, characteristic of the effects of baking soda put on them to inhibit decay and to tenderise.

It was, in general salty, but without actual flavor. Cheese was put on top of it, and of course the woman with the cheese grater asking if we wanted more.

My wife and I like cheese, but we prefer it on fresh food, not food that seemed like it was done sometime last week.


did I say that once was enough?

Garlic puree? Have you no chef's knife?
Italian Sausage? Which one?



That is, my friend, a poor recipe.

And what's wrong with garlic puree? There's no reason it couldn't be made with fresh garlic.

companies. There is no comparison between real chicken stock and bullion cubes. You don't need to make it yourself, but bullion cubes are a travesty.

As for the garlic, fresh garlic is much more flavorful than "garlic puree." It's easy to use, available at every supermarket, and all you need to process it is a chef's knife. You just smash the cloves of garlic with the flat of the knife, take off the skins, then chop it up with the same knife.

As for the other main ingredient, "italian sausage," as sold in bulk in grocery stores is the same as plain pork sausage. The only difference between it and breakfast sausage is some "Italian Seasoning" mixed in. There are dozens of different kinds of "italian sausage." Generic stuff is virtually flavorless.

Then, there's the bacon. Bacon is not used in Italian cuisine. Instead, some pancetta would be the ingredient, used very sparingly, since it has quite a powerful flavor.

Again, why duplicate a crappy dish, when you can make something fresh and far, far better than the "Zuppa" from Olive Garden? You might as well buy Progresso soup in a can.

And also, bouillon cubes are a great deal cheaper than chicken stock and anyone with a little common sense knows that you can substitute the water and bouillon cubes with chicken stock or something like "Better than Bouillon" if you wanted to up the flavor quotient. The other nits seem rather petty. Everyone has different tastes, and I've never had any canned soup that I find nearly as good as this inauthentic, yet still very tasty soup. To suggest that this dish wouldn't be fresh is just silly. If I can make something that I'd enjoy frequently for a good deal cheaper than eating out without sacrificing anything, why wouldn't I?

Where I live, there are so many good Italian restaurants to choose from - Olive Garden simply can't compete.

:9:9

In fact, my ancestors hailed from some of Europe's most gastronomically-challenged regions, but I developed an appreciation for many varieties of ethnic dishes - Italian cuisine ranking very high on my scale of appreciation.

Olive Garden is crap. The sauce is what makes or breaks Italian food, and Olive Garden fails miserably on that count. Any small, family-owned Italian restaurant has far superior fare than the bland noodles & ketchup dished up by Olive Garden. It's no more authentic Italian than Taco Bell is authentic Mexican; it's where the Cracker Barrel and Bob Evans crowd goes when they're feeling 'adventurous.'

I'd probably use real chicken stock, but it can sometimes be a pain. I'd also probably add more kale as that's one of my favorite parts of the soup. Thanks for the recipe, this is one of my faves.

and I will give this a try. It sounds good:)

I've never been to the Olive Garden; given their current stupidity? I never will.

Letterman even admitted. Move on.