absurd pirate's good ass zuppa toscana recipe
Wanna enjoy good soup? Now's your chance, courtesy of the self-proclaimed indie-web pirate king. This is a family recipe that has been around since my childhood and I've been obsessed with it ever since then. I've only shared this recipe with Kami up until recently (physically mailed her a handwritten recipe that is probably hella disorganized because I've never actually written down a recipe before). With that, enjoy.
Zuppa Toscana
Note: A lot of this is going to come down to personal taste, what you want more or less of. I'm not gonna give measurements on a lot of stuff because I mostly just eyeball it. Any measurements will likely be in Freedom Units, since I don't know the metric equivalent and I don't feel like going back and forth calculating them. Also, for your broths, I like to go with low/no sodium to control salt levels to my preference since no 2 brands are the same in their sodium quantities.
Recommended Kitchenware
- an at least 6 quart dutch oven or pot. Just something deep and preferably with some weight (of course depending on your circumstance you can use a smaller pot, I would just recommend reducing the quantities of your ingredients)
- ladle
- spatula
- a chef knife
- a cheese shredder
- cutting board
Note: For sanitary reasons, I recommend chopping veggies first before cutting meat to save on having to either use 2 different knives/cutting boards, or having to wash knife and cutting board between cutting meat and veggies.
Ingredients
- 2 32oz cartons of chicken broth
- 1 32 oz carton of veggie broth
- 4-5 medium-sized russet potatoes (roughly 4-6oz each)
- 1 package (about 5-6 links) of Italian sausage (Mild or Hot, your choice, I like hot) (if you did ground sausage then go for about 1lbs)
- 1 leek
- 1 shallot
- 3-4 cloves of garlic
- 6oz bacon
- 4 cups of heavy cream
- 1 bundle of kale
Optional:
- Cholula Hot Sauce
- Asiago or Parmesan (please for the love of god do NOT do the granulated shit, that goes on Pizza, not in soup)
- salt to taste
Steps
- Set your pot onto your stove and set it to medium heat (roughly a 5 or a 6 on most stove tops)
- Loosely chop your leek, shallot, and mince garlic. Chop potatoes into 1in x 1in cubes. Chopping your bacon into small pieces (about half an inch long and as wide as the bacon strip is what I do).
- Put potatoes into a bowl of cold water to remove excess starch
- Once oven is hot, throw the bacon into the pot and cook until crispy.
- Remove the bacon from the pot and put onto a paper towel-lined bowl (this will help with the excess fat)
- Carefully remove the excess bacon fat (leaving about 1-2tbsp worth of fat in the pot)
- Slice and remove the skin around the links and place the meat inside the pot (if you did ground sausage just throw it all in)
- Fully cook the sausage, ensure to break them into smaller chunks (however big you want, it's up to you)
- Once the sausage is fully cooked, add in your chopped leek, shallots, and minced garlic and cook until the leek and shallots are wilted down.
- remove the potatoes from the water and add to the pot.
- Add all of your chicken and veggie broth
- Crank the heat to high and bring the soup to a boil
- Once at a boil drop to a simmer (just below boiling, no a simmer is not low heat contrary to seemingly popular belief) and let sit for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. At the same time, take out your heavy cream and place on a table next to your stove to take the chill off.
- Once the 30 minutes are up, add salt and shred about 2 tbsp of your cheese of choice into the pot. Taste your soup, add salt to your liking (feel free to speedrun hypertension if you so choose, life is short)
- Wash your kale, then add tear by hand chunks and add them to the soup (I make sure to not add the stems as they tend to be more bitter, the leaves are the best part anyway). Let the kale wilt down.
- Slowly add and stir heavy cream into the soup
- Scoop soup into a bowl, add cheese and Cholula to your liking
- Enjoy!
That's basically it, there's probably enough to serve 2-4 people... or 1 if you're like me and will damn-near solo an entire pot in a single sitting.
Reply via email: me@absurdpirate.com
as of writing this...
It's my birthday tomorrow, so I'm just kinda chilling. Finally got my hands on a new stylus for my turntable, so I've been enjoying listening to my record collection. Threw on Madvillainy (MF DOOM) and Warning (Green Day). My little girl is getting sick so she's watching some wiggles and resting on my wife. I'm trying to play some minecraft atm, but have been running into issues with certain sounds not playing for some weird reason (witches have no sound for some reason). Bought a 7th gen iPod classic that I'm waiting for to come in so I can finally replace the logic board on my custom iPod classic.