More Easy Soup Recipes
We have many soup recipes on Inspired Taste. Here are a few favorites:
For more tomato-based soups, take a look at our chilled tomato soup recipe or this roasted tomato sop with lemon.
I love creamy soups. Two of the most popular creamy soups on the blog are this easy creamy veggie soup and this simple homemade potato soup.
Homemade broths add so much to soups. Heres our recipe for homemade vegetable broth as well as our favorite recipe for chicken broth.
While we are on the subject of chicken, you must take a look at our easy homemade chicken noodle soup recipe. It is healthy, satisfying, and tastes incredible. Its faster to make than the traditional version, too!
Recipe updated, originally posted October 2015. Since posting this in 2015, we have tweaked the recipe to be more clear and added a quick recipe video. Adam and Joanne
Tomato Basil Soup Recipe Ingredients
You only need a handful of ingredients to make this roasted tomato basil soup:
- Roma tomatoes Just like in my homemade salsa recipe, the tomato variety you use here matters. If you cant find roma tomatoes, substitute another variety of small plum tomatoes. Larger heirloom or salad tomatoes are too watery for this recipe.
- Onion and garlic They add savory depth of flavor.
- Carrot It makes this soup nice and creamy without any nuts or heavy cream.
- Balsamic vinegar For tang!
- Thyme leaves For fresh, aromatic flavor.
- Fresh basil You cant make tomato basil soup without it! I blend in the basil right at the end so that it keeps its fresh flavor and flecks the soup with green.
- Extra-virgin olive oil It gives the soup body and richness.
- Vegetable broth It creates the soups flavorful base.
- And sea salt and freshly ground black pepper To make all the flavors pop!
Find the complete recipe with measurements below.
Canned Tomatoes Vs Fresh
I know, I know, this recipe is written as tomato soup from fresh tomatoes. But sometimes you just dont have fresh tomatoes. Can you still make this recipe? Of course! If you dont have a garden or farmers market nearby, feel free to substitute canned whole plum tomatoes. Simply use the same number of pounds that are listed in the recipe just from canned instead of fresh tomatoes.
This recipe has a lot of leeway for the amounts of each ingredient. If you have a little more or a little less, no worries. Use it anyway! It will likely turn out just fine even if you are a little over the poundage of tomatoes or under.
Also Check: Does Lipton Onion Soup Mix Go Bad
How To Make Tomato Basil Soup
Making this tomato basil soup recipe is the perfect activity for a cool September afternoon. Your kitchen will fill with the scent of roasting tomatoes, simmering thyme, and fresh basil. Suffice it to say, when the soups done, youll be more than ready to eat.
First, roast the tomatoes. Slice them in half vertically and arrange them cut-side-up on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Drizzle them with olive oil and season them with salt and pepper. Then, roast them at 350° for an hour, until theyre still juicy but starting to shrivel.
Next, sauté the aromatics. Cook the onion, carrot, and garlic in a large pot over medium heat for about 8 minutes, or until they soften.
Then, simmer. Add the roasted tomatoes, broth, vinegar, and thyme leaves to the pot, bring to a boil, and simmer for 20 minutes to allow the flavors to develop.
Finally, blend! Allow the tomato basil soup to cool slightly. Transfer it to a blender and puree until smooth, working in batches if necessary. When the soup is smooth, add the basil leaves and pulse until just combined. Enjoy!
How To Can Tomato Soup Step By Step
Ill walk you through the process here in photos because it really helps, especially if youre new to canning. At the bottom of the post, youll also find a printable and detailed recipe card. The recipe card also contains water bath canning instructions if you dont want to pressure can this soup.
Rinse all your awesome tomatoes and cut them in half. If you have big ol hunkers, then cut them into smaller chunks. Add a strainer/colander to a large bowl.
Wash and clean your jars. For canning soup, I recommend quart-sized regular mouth jars. It is no longer necessary to sterilize jars before canning but you should make sure they are preheated enough to not crack when placed in hot water.
You can put them in a clean dishwasher and run them through a quick wash cycle, or place them in a large pan with some water in a low heat oven until you need them. Ive even just put hot tap water in them before and left them on the counter.
Wash your lids with hot soapy water and place them in a clean bowl for now.
Add the tomatoes to a pot of boiling water and parboil them until you see the skins start to come off one of the tomatoes . You can read a more in-depth tutorial on How to Blanch and Peel Tomatoes.
Use a slotted spoon and remove the tomatoes and place in the strainer.
Run the tomatoes through a food mill to remove the seeds and skins. If my tomatoes are particularly watery, I will strain them a bit through a mesh strainer.
Also Check: Is Broccoli Cheddar Soup Keto Friendly
How To Make Classic Tomato Soup
In a large nonreactive pot, heat the olive oil and 2 tablespoons of butter over medium-low heat. When butter is melted, add the onions and cook over medium-low/medium heat, stirring occasionally, until soft and translucent. Do not brown.
Add the garlic and cook for a few minutes more, stirring to be sure garlic does not burn. Add the flour and continue cooking and stirring for 1 to 2 minutes more.
Add the chicken broth, tomatoes, sugar, thyme, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper.
Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat while stirring to make sure that the flour is not sticking to the bottom or sides of the pan. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for about 30 minutes.
Use a hand-held immersion blender to puree soup until very smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Stir in remaining 3 tablespoons of butter.
Ladle soup into bowls and garnish with fresh basil, croutons, and a generous sprinkling of Parmigiano-Reggiano.
Homemade Canned Tomato Soup: A Few Rules
The tricky thing about making canned tomato soup is that many recipes use ingredients like flour as a thickener or cream for added texture and flavor. Neither of these can be safely canned, even with a pressure canner.
The other thing about making it for canning is that you need to use an acid.
When you can tomato soup, you have to make sure the acid level is high enough that it will be shelf-stable. But you also dont want that acid level to affect the soup.
When canning tomatoes, The National Center for Home Food Preservation advises that you use no more than 3 cups of vegetables for every 22 lbs of tomatoes. If you add too many vegetables, you dilute the natural acid from the tomatoes, and your soup is no longer able to be canned.
Sticking to this advised ratio, I added most of my flavorings for this soup in the way of dried herbs and spices.
Also Check: Gluten Free Tomato Soup Walmart
How To Thicken Tomato Soup
If youre wondering how to thicken tomato soup, there are 8 simple tricks you can try!
Tomato soup is scrumptious comfort food that soothes the heart and soul.
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It has to be thick though, otherwise, it wont be as good. If your soup comes out too thin? Relax, because there are many ways to fix that.
Whether you want your soup to have a slight, medium, or immense thickness, these simple techniques will do the trick.
Intrigued? Well, without further ado, here are 8 easy ways to thicken your tomato soup and make it souper amazing.
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Also Check: Lipton Onion Soup Mix Chip Dip
How To Freeze Tomato Soup
To freeze, let the soup cool to room temperature. Then, transfer it to freezer-friendly containers and freeze for up to 2 months. I recommend freezing it in individually-sized portions or at least in portions that you’d eat in a sitting as a family.
Thaw overnight in the fridge and reheat in a pot on the stove over medium-low heat.
How To Store Homemade Tomato Basil Soup
- In the refrigerator: store any leftover tomato basil soup in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4-5 days. Reheat it back on the stovetop or in the microwave.
- In the freezer: add the leftover soup to a freezer-friendly, airtight container and place it in the freezer for up to 3 months. To reheat, let the sauce thaw in the fridge before heating it through on the stovetop or in the microwave.
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How To Make Homemade Tomato Soup
What Type Of Tomatoes To Use
Any tomatoes can be used in this Tomato Soup recipe. Their flavor will directly translate to the flavor of the soup!
For instance, Roma or Plum tomatoes, the smaller, darker oval-shaped tomatoes most commonly used for tomato sauce, have less water.
Their flavor will create a denser tomato-flavored soup.
Home grown heirloom tomatoes will have a completely different flavor!
This gives total flexibility to create a soup to match your favorite tomato flavor.
There is ONE key.
You May Like: Campbell’s Tomato Basil Soup Recipe
How To Make Home
Nothing But soothing steam is rising from a heat bowl of nourishing soup. Creating an outsized pot of do-it-yourself soup or stew may be an excellent way to utilize leftovers and increase the menu set up while not additional spending. The accessorial bonus is one will freeze soup or stew in portioned sizes for future meals.
It’s nice to own choices within the deep freeze from the split pea to ham and barley, borsh, or tomato soup – having the ability to settle on what’s desired at the time thaw, heat au fait the stove and the serve. Frugal shoppers know that boughten stock or broth is pretty pricey: $3 for less than 3-4 c. of stock. Another is that the powder or cubed stocks are laden with coloring, additives, and salt.
It’s simple to create your alimental beef, chicken, ham, or vegetable stock. Keep an outsized instrumentality able to collect clean, disease-free vegetable peels, cores, and trimmings. Add the inner onion or garlic peels, furthermore as any herb branches, meat bones, and any water reserved from steaming or boiling vegetables.
Place in an exceedingly pot, cover with water and produce to a boil. Cut back heat to a coffee simmer and canopy the pot. Once 1/2 AN hour or so, shut down the warmth and keep the lined pool on the burner, utilizing the heat still within the burner till it’s cooled. Pour through a fine strainer, live and freeze in 2-4 c. containers. Or, store in the fridge for up to a week.
How To Make A Creamier Consistency
Pureeing the tomatoes with a blender creates a smooth mouthfeel when processed down into small suspended particles. However, if you want a little more richness, add in some heavy cream right before serving. You dont need to simmer as it can curdle. Just add 1 tablespoon at a time, then season with salt and pepper to taste.
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How To Make A Tomato Salad
This healthy tomato salad is really one of the most simple sides. In this easy salad recipe, I simply combine garden fresh tomatoes, onions and a sprinkle herbs.
You can cut your tomatoes in half if theyre cherry tomatoes but if you have other garden tomatoes, just bite sized chunks is great. You dont need to drain them or remove the seeds. I often make tomato salad with feta or bocconcini if I have it on hand.
Bocconcini is a small egg shaped ball of mozzarella cheese. It is mild in flavor on its own, but as it is a soft cheese, it absorbs flavor to add a delicious dimension to the flavor and texture of this salad. You can generally find bocconcini in the deli department.
If the bocconcini is hard to find in your grocery store, you can substitute feta , but I prefer the wonderful creaminess of bocconcini in this dish.
To make the Tomato Salad Dressing I simply toss the tomatoes with red wine vinegar, olive oil and salt & pepper. If you prefer, you can also make tomato salad with balsamic vinegar. For the herbs, I use whatever I have that is fresh from my garden. Favorites are basil, dill, parsley and oregano.
I love to pair this fresh tomato salad with grilled meat, like grilled chicken breast or lemon grilled pork chops. If you are lucky enough to have leftovers, this salad keeps well in the refrigerator, allowing the flavors to marinate. I love eating it the next day for a healthy lunch.
Nutrition Information
The Secret To Delicious Soup
If I can relay one tip to you from this recipe, it is not to rush. Time is the secret to a delicious soup. This soup is not overly long to make, but dont skip the step of letting the onions soften and begin to brown. Also, dont skip allowing the garlic and spices to bloom in the onions. These are steps that only add a few minutes to the total time, but they make a huge difference in the flavor of the final soup.
The soup will not need to simmer for hours on the stove as chili or stew would, but make sure to give each step ample time to develop flavors.
Read Also: Canned Gluten Free Chicken Noodle Soup
What Tomatoes Should I Use
The best tomatoes to use are paste tomatoes. These are tomatoes that have thicker, meatier walls and contain less water.
This means there will be more tomato and less juice, and the soup will thicken up faster, which is important because thickeners can not be used in homemade canned tomato soup.
Probably the most commonly known paste tomato is the Roma tomato. These little tomatoes have great flavor and work wonderfully for making homemade tomato soup.
How To Keep Homemade Tomato Soup From Curdling
I make homemade tomato soup pretty frequently. Its quick, easy and so good!
Plus all the ingredients are things that are easily kept on hand. I do have buy the tomato juice special, but it keeps in the pantry until Im ready to use it.
But the last time I made this soup, it curdled. I made sure not to boil it, but it still curdled. Curdled tomato soup is still edible. Theres nothing about it that will hurt you. Its just not as good, because the texture is off.
So last night I was determined to avoid curdling. I went on an internet search and found a few tricks that might help.
There were several tips for stirring milk into the base or vice versa. A couple of sites mentioned that the heat is part of what causes curdling. One site mentioned using baking soda to help neutralize the acid.
I decided to tweak my recipe with some of these ideas.
I added 1/4 tsp. baking soda to the flour when making the roux.
I used cold milk instead of warmed, which my original recipe called for.
I whisked in the milk very, very slowly. Im pretty sure Ive curdled the soup before, just by being impatient and pouring in the milk too fast.
And I heated the finished soup over low heat. It took a few minutes longer, but it worked!
Ive updated my recipe for Homemade Tomato Soup so it shows all of these steps now.
Dont miss the grilled cheese croutons to top it off!
I do admit that last night we just had regular grilled cheese with our soup. Either way, this is an easy winter supper.
Read Also: Roasted Corn And Poblano Soup
If Your Tomatoes Are Too Tart
This recipe calls for heavy cream which is optional. I dont generally add the cream, however, sometimes tomatoes can be very tart so the addition of extra cream can help smooth out the flavor.
Other additions for a tart soup include a shredded carrot cooked with the mixture, pinch of sugar, a couple of pats of butter or some coconut milk .
We often eat tomato soup with a classic Grilled Cheese Sandwich for dipping or topped with croutons and parmesan cheese!
