One of my kids absolute favorite meals is tomato soup and grilled cheese. Don’t ask me where they get that from. For one, I don’t much care for the standard canned tomato soup, and two, I really don’t like my grilled cheese dunked in it. But for some reason, when soup season comes a-calling, that’s one of the most requested soups. Last night, that was the chosen soup to hold in the crock-pot while we were at dance class, but I decided to fore-go the usual red & white can and make my own tomato soup.
I started with a trip through the garden. I had red, pink and yellow tomatoes ripe and ready, so I picked what I had, along with a few herbs. For the herbs I decided on 2 sprigs of thyme, 1 small sprig of rosemary, 1 sage leaf and a handful of fresh basil leaves. Back in the house I rinsed the herbs and set them aside, and then proceeded to core and dice the tomatoes. I filled my 4 cup measuring cup with chopped tomatoes and their juices. I left the skins on, by the way, but if you really wanted, I suppose you could remove them. I chopped a few aromatics and the basil, and then started cooking. The soup came together very quickly.
The first step was the mirepoix. I gave the onions a head start before adding the celery and carrots. I cooked them just until they were soft, as I wanted flavor, but no browning. The garlic and bay leaf also went in here for a minute before adding liquid.
I chose to use Better Than Bouillon vegetable broth for my added liquid. If you’ve been searching for a good veggie broth, I highly recommend that one, it’s a paste of sorts that you dilute in water, and it lasts forever in the fridge. After simmering the vegetables in the broth I added the chopped tomatoes and herbs, before covering the whole thing and cooking for about 20 minutes. I left the herbs whole on their stems except the basil. Since I was already removing a bay leaf, it was nothing to also pull out a few stems.
Since the kids love the soup in a can with no texture, I decided to get out the boat motor and puree the soup. By all means, leave the soup unadulterated and chunky, but pureeing the soup hides all the vegetables anyway and really gives the sop a creamy texture as well. Since I’d used red and yellow tomatoes, my soup came out a gorgeous shade of orange. A little salt and pepper, and dinner was done. I poured it into a crock-pot set to low to hold for a few hours, and it worked just fine.
And the verdict? The kids gobbled it up! At first they were hesitant about the color, but when I told them I made the soup with both yellow and red tomatoes, they took to it like you wouldn’t believe. They both told me that I should always make tomato soup like this. Abigail then also suggested that next time I use yellow and green zebra tomatoes to make the soup a green color too. I had two bowls of soup myself, which says a lot since I’m not normally a fan of plain tomato soup, but this one is really good. So good, in fact, that I may just be making a jumbo batch of Creamy Tomato Soup and tucking in the freezer for future tomato soups. We did top our soup with a sprinkle of provolone cheese and basil, goldfish for the kids, but this is one soup that doesn’t even need the grilled cheese. I think I’ll be having more for lunch today…
Creamy Tomato Soup
2 1/2 cups vegetable broth 4 cups freshly chopped tomatoes with their juices (alternately, use 1 quart canned tomatoes) 4 or 5 sprigs fresh herbs (My blend: 2 thyme, 1 rosemary, 1 sage leaf, 1 bunch basil) salt and pepper to taste
Heat olive oil in a pot over medium low heat. Add the diced onion. Cook the onion for about five minutes, or until translucent.
Add the carrot and celery. Cook for another 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add the garlic and bay leaf, stir and cook for another minute.
Pour the vegetable broth into the pot. Increase the heat and bring to a boil.
Add the diced tomatoes. If your herbs are in sprigs, just toss them in, you’ll retrieve them later. For basil, I like to chop it before adding, use about 6 good sized leaves.
Cover the pot with a lid, reduce heat to low, and simmer for about 20 minutes.
Remove the bay leaf and any whole herb sprigs you used.
Grab your immersion blender and give the soup a good blending with it. Alternately, you can carefully pour the hot soup into a blender and blend that way, but be sure to only fill the blender jar half full at a time, and be very careful with the hot soup.
Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Somehow, my ER schedule is messing up my blog reading and I skip over some on my list one day and others on my list another day. Anyway, this looks really good. I must admit that I do like the canned version but bet this is better. The last tomato soup I had was from a local deli and it was a bit too sweet…kind of tasted like spaghetti sauce.
Lol Claire, I have problems keeping up with my favorite blogs, and I don’t have a job!
This soup wasn’t sweet as all, well, not any more than a tomato is sweet. The leftovers had a more developed flavor too, so this would be a great candidate for make-ahead cooking.