Have you ever enjoyed a steaming bowl of Zuppa Toscana from Olive Garden and wondered how the chain gets it to taste so delicious? The chain's soups taste incredible for a number of reasons, and you can even achieve some of the same results in your home kitchen.

Part of the explanation is that Olive Garden's food is fresher than you might expect for a chain of its size. The restaurant crafts its soups daily and stores them in a specific way. On Olive Garden's YouTube channel, chef Carlo Weston touched on the process: "We do our fresh soups and sauces every day, every morning. It's not like we take things out of a box or out of the freezer." Another factor that may help increase satisfaction is customization. Olive Garden Executive Chef Terrence Tookes shared with Mashed that if customers "choose unlimited soup to start their meal, they don't have to stick to the same one." So even if the first option doesn't entirely hit the spot for you, a different one might.

What exactly Olive Garden does with finished batches of soup waiting to be served is less clear. On Quora, a self-identified former employee claimed they're prepared in large vats and transferred to vacuum-sealed bags that are kept in a warmer until the liquid is needed. Supposedly, the method ensures that the soups stay warm but do not burn. Multiple users on a Reddit thread have corroborated this, but others allegedly had a different experience, saying the soup is put in a cooler.

How to improve the quality of your homemade soups

Woman making soup

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While you probably wouldn't employ an elaborate system of bagging and warming soup like Olive Garden allegedly does, you can still try to make restaurant-quality versions at home. One way is to use fresh ingredients. In a YouTube video, an Olive Garden chef says that when you're "using fresh vegetables, it tastes better." At home, you'll also have control over the preparation. For example, you could try sautéing the veggies over low heat before adding broth, to mellow their flavor and soften their crunch-factor.

Whether you're ordering a soup like Olive Garden's minestrone or trying to replicate it home, the dish should have a well-crafted broth as the base. You can make yours from scratch to keep everything fresh. However, it's perfectly fine to use a store-bought option if you think it strikes the right notes.

Another good tip when it comes time to serve is to be cognizant of the temperature of your soup. Transferring it from a boiling hot pot to a bowl will naturally cool the food to an extent. If your dishes are heat safe, you could stick them in the oven at a low-temperature for a few minutes to allow them to heat up before adding the soup.