You Have To Say It in Joe Pesci’s Voice

Zuppa Toscanaaaaa

See? It just sounds better if you say it like Joe Pesci in Goodfellas. I’m pretty sure I could serve this soup to any of the characters in Goodfellas and they’d be just fine with it. It’s that good. And it’s got kale, so you can pretend it’s good for you too.

I can’t promise that it will make you into Ray Liotta, but I gotta say, I think my version is actually better than the one from Olive Garden. Yeah I go to Olive Garden, you wanna say something about it? I live in Oklahoma, there is a distinct shortage of “authentic” food of any kind other than burgers and BBQ.

So as you can see, you start out with some taters. I am really into Yukon Golds lately, they just taste and cook better than any of the others. But technically, you can use whatever kind you want. I like to leave the skins on because potato skins are good for you, dammit. Just be sure and scrub them!

Hey look! Vegetables! If you’re wondering why it’s so far down in that shot with the onions, it’s because I made this when my little brother was coming over, and knew if I didn’t make double we would definitely run out, lol.

Not sure if you guys know this, but Italian sausage is pretty greasy. Probably should have avoided some future heart complications and just drained and rinsed this. Don’t be me, guys.

The thing I particularly like about this recipe, is that if you WERE so inclined, it would be pretty easy to make healthier. Add more kale, use turkey Italian sausage, use half-and-half or even milk instead of heavy whipping cream. There’s a lot you can do with it. Possibly also don’t do what I did and cook and entire pound of bacon (400 degrees in the oven for 10 minutes!) to crumble up into the soup.

BACON

Considering it’s cold as balls outside right now, this would actually be a really good option for dinner….I might have to break down and go get the stuff for it. Or I could have leftovers today and just put it in the crockpot tomorrow.

I initially got this recipe from Damn Delicious, which is what it is.

Badass Zuppa Toscana
-insert Jersey Italian accent here-

Ingredients

• Bacon. As much of it as you feel like cooking and crumbling up
• 1 lb of Italian sausage. You can get it without the casings, or just slice and peel them off
• Splash of olive oil
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 whole diced onion
• 1 of those 32oz cartons of chickin broth
• 5-6 taters, sliced thin, skins on
• Like a lot of handfuls of kale. Go look up how to cut up kale, or just buy the bagged stuff
• 1 ½ cups of heavy whoopin cream (as one of my cousins called it)
• Salt-N-Pepa

1. A’ight so first things first, heat ur oven to 400, slap some bacon on a cookie sheet, and bake for 10 minutes. You don’t get grease splatters errywhere and you don’t have to tend it, it’s great.
2. Toss ya sausage direct into ya pot ur gonna make ur soup in, in this case I prefer Teflon.
3. Crumble all that delectable sausage up as it’s cooking. Mmmm it smells good. Go have a glass of Cupcake Moscato, and you’ll thank me. Drain it and set aside.
4. Toss ya onion and garlic up in there on medium-low heat, and drink while they get soft.
5. I use a mandolin slicer so I like to slice my taters direct into the pot at this point, but you can slice ‘em up and toss ‘em in all at once.
6. Add the chickin broth, salt and pepper, and sausage back in ya pot, bring to a boil, then simmer for 10 minutes-ish till them taters is soft.
7. Stir in your kale and let it cook till it gets soft and wilty, then add that heavy cream and oh mah gawd that’s so damn good. Bring back up to a simmer, and call it good.
8. You remember that bacon? Crumble it up and put it on top ya bowl of soup. Go finish that bottle of wine and try not to sink into self-loathing with how much of this soup you will eat.