This Zuppa Toscana instant pot soup recipe is a hearty kale potato sausage soup that’s an Olive Garden copycat.
It’s super easy to make, plus it’s gluten-free. Nothing beats a thick bowl of soup in the fall and winter and this will definitely become a new favorite in your home.
If you can’t get enough soup recipes and you want to eat a hearty bowl all and winter long (like we do!), then you’ll also want to make our popular crock pot taco soup recipe, our broccoli cheddar soup, or our crock pot stuffed pepper soup.
A printable recipe card is at the bottom of the post!
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Zuppa Toscana Instant Pot Recipe
If Zuppa Toscana soup from Olive Garden is one of your favorites and you’ve been wondering if you can replicate it at home, you’re in luck! This instant pot Zuppa Toscana recipe is SUPER easy.
What is Zuppa Toscana soup?
Zuppa Toscana is based on the beloved Olive Garden Italian soup recipe that translates to Tuscan soup. It’s basically a potato sausage soup and the main ingredients are potatoes, cream, sausage, and kale that get garnished with Romano cheese and bacon. Whether you call it Zuppa Toscana, Tuscan soup, or Italian potato and sausage soup, it’s simply a bowl full of goodness.
We recently made a slow cooker Zuppa Toscana soup recipe if you want to try it in your crock-pot too!
Ingredients for Pressure Cooker Zuppa Toscana
- 1/2 lb bacon, cooked (about 4-5 slices bacon)
- 1 lb spicy or mild Italian sausage, crumbled
- 1 large red onion, chopped
- 2 Tbsp minced garlic cloves
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
- 3 lb Yukon Gold potatoes, cut into 1″ cubes
- 4 cups chopped kale
- 32 oz chicken broth
- 1 cup heavy whipping cream
- Romano cheese or parmesan to sprinkle
- 1/8-1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (optional)
How to Make Instant Pot Zuppa Toscana
Before you start cooking, you’ll want to prep all of the ingredients. That includes chopping the onion, mincing the garlic, and cubing the potatoes.
The type of kale we used was pre-washed and pre-cut in a bag from the store, you can definitely chop your own if you prefer. We love to use the frozen minced garlic in the freezer section at Trader Joes, it’s a huge time saver for sure!
While we used peeled baking potatoes in our crock pot Zuppa Toscana recipe, for this one I wanted to make it with yellow Yukon Gold potatoes. Since gold potatoes are much smaller than russet potatoes, I decided not to peel these. If you WANT to peel your potatoes, you of course can 😉
Potato Type Matters
Look at this photo below, the main difference here is one of the soups used Yukon Gold potatoes and the other used Russet potatoes! These soups have the exact same ingredients otherwise.
Using peeled Russet potatoes thickens the soup broth since Russets are very starchy and start to break down during the cooking time.
Yukon Gold potatoes hold their shape and do not break down during cooking. So whether you’re looking for a thicker potato or a brothy soup will depend on what type of potatoes you use!
Instant Pot Zuppa Toscana Steps
We already had bacon from earlier in the week, so I did NOT cook the bacon garnish in our instant pot. Because I had plans to make this recipe later in the week, I reserved bacon grease for the instant pot Zuppa Toscana soup. Some people leave the bacon garnish off of the Zuppa Toscana instant pot recipe since it’s already loaded with sausage.
While we love our instant pot, but our favorite way to cook bacon is actually in the oven since it’s easy to make a large batch to use in other recipes.
Instant Pot Bacon
To cook your bacon in the instant pot, turn your pot to Saute High, and once heated cook the bacon on one side for about 7 minutes. When it’s getting brown, flip the bacon over and continue cooking until it’s cooked to your desired level of crispness (I love bacon super crispy and my darling hubby does not, but crisp bacon works best in a soup recipe like this one.
Remove the bacon, drain the grease, and set aside one Tbsp of the bacon grease for cooking the sausage.
Cook the Italian sausage in the bacon grease until cooked through, this will take about 7-8 mins. Drain all but 1 Tbsp or so of the grease.
Add the chopped onions and cook for 5 more mins until the onion starts to soften. Add the minced garlic and cook for 1 more minute.
Add the chicken broth and diced potatoes. Make sure the chicken broth is completely covering the potatoes, press the potatoes down into the liquid if needed.
We added our chicken broth first just so we could add enough potatoes up to the broth level in the pot. For us that ended up being just under 3 lb of Yukon Gold potato pieces.
Pressure Cook on Manual High for 5 minutes, some pressure cookers might call this setting Pressure Cook (like mine!) It’ll take about 15 minutes for the pot to come to pressure.
Once the pressure cooking time is complete, do a Natural Release of pressure for 10 minutes, this helps to prevent soup splatters! Once the 10 minutes is up, do a Quick Release of your instant pot to release the remaining pressure in the pot.
Once the potatoes are all the way cooked through, add the kale and whipping cream and cook on high for 3-4 more mins or until the kale is wilted.
Garnish with bacon and Romano or Parmesan cheese on top. Enjoy!
Recipe Tips
- Prep the ingredients before you start, pressure cooking magic goes quickly!
- Use fresh baby spinach if you don’t like kale
- Olive Garden uses Romano cheese, but grated Parmesan cheese makes a great substitute
- The soup is typically made with a spicy Italian pork sausage, but you could use a mild/sweet Italian sausage or even Italian chicken sausage.
- Feel free to use either russet potatoes OR Yukon gold in the recipe, it DOES change the soup consistency.
- The potatoes can be peeled or left unpeeled
- Skip the bacon if you don’t want the added fat and calories.
- Using half and half instead of whipping cream works, it’ll be a little bit thinner consistency
- To make instant pot Zuppa Toscana paleo or Whole 30, use coconut milk instead of cream and skip the cheese. Some people following a paleo diet don’t consider potatoes paleo, if this is you, substitute sweet potatoes for the potatoes.
What to Eat with Zuppa Toscana?
Instant Pot Zuppa Toscana soup is really a well-rounded meal in a bowl since it has a starch, vegetables, dairy and protein, but sometimes it’s nice to at least have one or two sides to go with your hearty soup.
I’m always a huge fan of the soup and salad combo!
What to eat with Zuppa Toscana instant pot soup:
- Antipasto salad
- Charcuterie plate
- Chop chop salad
- A simple green salad
- Caesar salad
- Garlic bread
- Breadsticks
- Rolls
Other Soup Recipes You’ll Love
- Instant Pot Broccoli Cheese Soup
- Pizza Soup (Crockpot, instant pot)
- Crockpot low carb taco soup
- Chicken Zoodle Soup
- Instant Pot Cuban chicken stew
- Crockpot chili with kielbasa
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BEST Zuppa Toscana Instant Pot Recipe
This instant pot Zuppa Toscana soup recipe is a hearty kale potato sausage soup that's an Olive Garden copycat.Â
It's super easy to make, plus it's gluten-free. Nothing beats a thick bowl of soup in the fall and winter and this will definitely become a new favorite in your home.
Ingredients
- 1/2 lb bacon (about 4-5 slices bacon)
- 1 lb spicy Italian sausage (or mild Italian sausage)
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 2 Tbsp minced garlic cloves
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
- 3 lb Yukon Gold potatoes, cut into 1" cubes
- 4 C chopped kale
- 32 oz chicken broth
- 1 cup heavy whipping cream
- Romano cheese or parmesan to sprinkle
- 1/8-1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (optional and to taste)
Instructions
Before you start cooking, you'll want to prep all of the ingredients. That includes chopping the onion, mincing the garlic, and cubing the potatoes.
Instant Pot Zuppa Toscana Steps
We already had bacon from earlier in the week, so I did NOT cook the bacon garnish in our instant pot. Because I had plans to make this recipe later in the week, I reserved bacon grease for the instant pot Zuppa Toscana soup. Some people leave the bacon garnish off of the Zuppa Toscana instant pot recipe since it's already loaded with sausage.
Instant Pot Bacon
To cook your bacon in the instant pot, turn your pot to Saute, and once heated cook the bacon on one side for about 7 minutes. When it's getting brown, flip the bacon over and continue cooking until it's cooked to your desired level of crispness.
Remove the bacon, drain the grease, and set aside one Tbsp of the bacon grease for cooking the sausage.
Cook the Italian sausage in the bacon grease until cooked through, this will take about 7-8 mins. Drain all but 1 Tbsp or so of the grease.
Add the chopped onions and cook for 5 more mins until the onion starts to soften. Add the minced garlic and cook for 1 more minute.
Add the chicken broth and diced potatoes. Make sure the chicken broth is completely covering the potatoes, press the potatoes down into the liquid if needed.
We added our chicken broth first just so we could add enough potatoes up to the broth level in the pot. For us that ended up being just under 3 lb of Yukon Gold potato pieces.
Pressure Cook on Manual High for 5 minutes, some pressure cookers might call this setting Pressure Cook (like mine!)Â It'll take about 15 minutes for the pot to come to pressure.
Once the pressure cooking time is complete, do a Natural Release of pressure for 10 minutes, this helps to prevent soup splatters! Once the 10 minutes is up, do a Quick Release of your instant pot to release the remaining pressure in the pot.
Once the potatoes are all the way cooked through, add the kale and whipping cream and cook on high for 3-4 more mins or until the kale is wilted.Â
Garnish with bacon and Romano or Parmesan cheese on top. Enjoy!
Notes
- Prep the ingredients before you start, pressure cooking magic goes quickly!
- Use fresh baby spinach if you don't like kale
- Olive Garden uses Romano cheese, but grated Parmesan cheese makes a great substitute
- The soup is typically made with a spicy Italian pork sausage, but you could use a mild/sweet Italian sausage or even Italian chicken sausage.
- Feel free to use either russet potatoes OR Yukon gold in the recipe, it DOES change the soup consistency. Yukon hold their shape, Russet break down slightly in the soup and makes it thicker.
- The potatoes can be peeled or left unpeeled
- Skip the bacon if you don't want the added fat and calories.
- Using half and half instead of whipping cream works, it'll be a little bit thinner consistency
- To make instant pot Zuppa Toscana paleo or Whole 30, use coconut milk instead of cream and skip the cheese. Some people following a paleo diet don't consider potatoes paleo, if this is you, substitute sweet potatoes for the potatoes.
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Nutrition Information
Yield 8 Serving Size 1Amount Per Serving Calories 640Total Fat 38gSaturated Fat 17gTrans Fat 0gUnsaturated Fat 22gCholesterol 101mgSodium 1609mgCarbohydrates 47gFiber 5gSugar 6gProtein 29g
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