Slow Cooker Zuppa Toscana (low carb, keto friendly) is a soup lovers dream.
Creamy soup loaded with delicious ingredients like sausage, cauliflower, bacon, kale, and onion, this Zuppa Toscana recipe has everything you need to give you a great flavor, texture, and filling meal.
During the colder months I am soup obsessed. Some of my favorites include:
- Ham and Bean Soup
- Instant Pot Lasagna Soup
- Rotisserie Chicken Noodle Soup
- Creamy Chicken Orzo Soup
- Easy Meatball Soup
This Zuppa Toscana soup is easy to make and even easier to love. Quickly prep the ingredients and then throw them in the slow cooker and let the savory flavors meld together to create a comforting, low carb wonder.
Can I Freeze Zuppa Toscana Soup?
I love this soup! It’s tasty, filling, and low carb. I also love that when I make a batch of this treasure I can freeze some for later.
I love meals that I can freeze. It’s great on busy nights to have a few dishes already made and in the freezer that you can pull out and heat up.
Fortunately this slow cooker Zuppa Toscana can be frozen. So you can make this dish ahead of time and freeze or make a big batch of this delicious Zuppa Toscana recipe and freeze the left overs.
I love to freeze left overs. It’s like the gift that keeps on giving. Have a great meal one night and look forward to having it again in the future without more prep.
Tips For Freezing Soup:
Use gallon sized freezer bags.
When freezing a meal I like to use gallon sized freezer bags when possible. Soup fits perfectly into these bags.
I like freezer bags because they seem to not take up a lot of room in the freezer. Plus, if you have a jam packed freezer, freezer bags seem easier to squeeze in somewhere then a Tupperware container.
Label you freezer bags.
Using a sharpie, I like to label the outside of the bag with the date that the meal was frozen. This way if I forget about a meal and then one day see it in the freezer I know whether it is still good to use or not.
Usually soup can last for about 4 months or so in the freezer.
Let soup cool completely before freezing.
If you don’t let soup cool completely before freezing, then the warm bag of soup can start to thaw surrounding food in the freezer. The surrounding food will then refreeze, but this could harm the integrity of some foods.
Don’t add cream before freezing.
Soups can sometimes be frozen with cream, but sometimes when cream is frozen the texture of the soup changes or separates.
I think the best way to freeze soups that have cream as one of the ingredients is to leave out the cream when freezing. For Zuppa Toscana soup, just add the cream when the soup is done reheating.
That way you don’t have to worry about the texture of the soup being affected.
Don’t overcook ingredients that will become mushy frozen.
Fortunately with this low carb Zuppa Toscana recipe you don’t have to worry about mushy ingredients too much.
For example, this soup does’t have noodles, which if it did then you would want wait and add them when you reheat the soup.
Also, because this soup is a low carb version it does not have potatoes like some other Zuppa Toscana recipes, either. So, you don’t have to worry about how to cook potatoes that are going to be frozen.
However, If you wanted to add potatoes to the soup you could. Just if you are planning to make the soup as a freezer meal then you would want to stop cooking the potatoes just before they become tender.
By not overcooking the potatoes, this will help the potatoes to better survive the freezing and reheating process. Otherwise, overcooked potatoes that are frozen and reheated will become mushy.
Note: Adding potatoes to this soup makes it no longer low carb.
Fortunately, as mentioned before, you don’t have to worry about this with this Zuppa Toscana recipe.
Lastly, sometime you have to leave veggies in soup slightly crunchy before freezing, but with this soup you should be fine.
How Many Calories Are In A Bowl Of Zuppa Toscana?
Every recipe will vary, but there is approximately 220 calories in about a cup of typical Zuppa Toscana soup.
That really isn’t that bad considering that it has a cream based broth and is such a hearty soup.
This soup really is quite filling. Bacon, sausage, cream, cauliflower, and kale, all these great ingredients will fill you right up.
In fact I really love the use of kale in this soup. It is a more filling green and it really adds a nice texture to the soup.
Plus, kale is of course low in calories too.
If you are looking for a delicious, Zuppa Toscana copycat recipe, try this soup. It provides you with the great flavors of the classic Zuppa Toscana soup that we all love, yet with some slight changes it is low carb too. Bonus.
Is Zuppa Toscana Soup Gluten Free?
I am happy to say that this Zuppa Toscana recipe is gluten free, not all Zuppa Toscana soups are.
Some soups in general may seem to be gluten free, but are not always.
You may look at a soup and notice that there are no noodles or breading so it must be gluten free. Unfortunately, that is not always the case.
A soup’s visible ingredients may seem gluten free, but it may in fact not be.
For example, a lot of soups will use flour as a thickener. Flour of course has gluten.
This soup has no flour in it.
The other catch is that when you order soup at a restaurant it may not technically have gluten in the soup recipe, but the soup ingredients may be placed on the same surfaces as other gluten ingredients so the soup can’t be categorized as gluten free.
Fortunately, if you are on a strict gluten free diet, you can control possible cross contamination issues when you are cooking in your own kitchen, instead of ordering food at a restaurant.
It’s Time For A Hearty, Delicious Low Carb Soup!
Comfort does not have to equal carbs. Enjoy a nice cup of comforting keto friendly, slow cooker Zuppa Toscana soup without the guilt of having a dish loaded with unnecessary carbs.
This hearty, flavorful soup will be one that you will want to make again and again. It is just that good and easy to make. Bring the fantastic taste of Zuppa Toscana soup into your home. You and your family will love it.
Looking for other low carb favorites? Try Beef Stuffed Zucchini Boats (Low Carb) or Keto Meatloaf. Either of these dishes would make a great low carb mid week meal.
More Great Recipes
Slow Cooker Zuppa Toscana (low carb, keto friendly)
Ingredients
- 1 pound mild or hot ground Italian sausage
- ½ pound bacon
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 medium yellow onion finely diced (approximately ½ cup)
- 3 cloves garlic minced
- 24 ounces chicken stock
- 3 cups kale chopped
- ¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes crushed
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon pepper
- 1 ½ cup heavy cream
- 1 large cauliflower head diced into small florets
- 1/4 cup parmesan cheese grated (garnish)
Instructions
- Chop bacon into little pieces, then in a large skillet, over medium heat, cook the bacon and brown the ground sausage together until cooked through.
- Drain grease, and transfer sausage and bacon into a 6-quart slow cooker.
- In the same skillet, add olive oil and onions and saute until translucent and fragrant
- Add the onions, chicken stock, kale, crushed red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper to the slow cooker. Mix until combined.
- Cook on high for 4 hours or on low for 8 hours.
- With 1-1 1/2 hours of cooking time left, add cauliflower to the slow cooker.
- After cooking time is up add the heavy cream and mix until combined.
- Taste, season with salt and pepper as needed, to taste
- Serve hot garnished with a sprinkle of parmesan cheese
Nutrition
Our recipe card software calculates these nutrition facts based on averages for the above ingredients, different brands, and quality of produce/meats may have different nutritional information, always calculate your own based on the specific products you use in order to achieve accurate macros for this recipe.
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