Creamy Tomato Soup

I remember eating tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches as a child.  It is always a warm, fuzzy memory.

I was recently given four pounds of ripe garden tomatoes.  They were ripe enough that I needed to use them immediately so I decided to make tomato soup.  I have made the soup before, but have always used canned tomatoes.  This was my first attempt using fresh.

Creamy Tomato Soup

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter

10 sprigs of thyme, tied together (I am lucky enough to have some in my container garden.)

1 medium onion, thinly sliced

2 garlic cloves thinly sliced

1/4 cup tomato paste

4 pounds of fresh tomatoes

2 teaspoons sugar, divided

1/4 cup heavy cream (or more to taste)

Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

I don’t want to have seeds and tomato skins in the soup so my first step is to concasse the tomatoes.  That is just a fancy term for tomatoes without the seeds and skins.  It is not a difficult process.  I put a pot of water on to boil.  In the meantime, I cored the tomatoes and cut an X in the bottom.  I also prepared an ice bath, a large bowl filled with ice and water.  With the water boiling, I added the tomatoes, a few at a time.  I let them boil until they started to peel (about 30 seconds) and then moved them to the ice bath.  The ice bath stops the cooking process so the tomatoes do not cook from residual heat.  I repeated the process until I had boiled them all, then removed the peels and sliced them to remove the seeds.  I strained the juice from the seeds back into the bowl of tomatoes.

Next, I prepared my mis en place, a fancy way of saying everything in its place.  It is simply preparing all the ingredients before you start making the dish.  It is why all the tv cooks can make it look so easy.  Cut the ingredients and portion them so you can just add them without stopping to measure and prepare as you go.  This bit of knowledge has made cooking so much easier and so much more enjoyable.

Once I finished the prep work, I was ready to make tomato soup.  I started by melting the butter in a large, heavy pot on medium heat.  I am lucky that Chris loves to cook so we have some very nice kitchen equipment.  I use a dutch oven for this.  I added the onions, thyme sprigs (tied together in a bundle with kitchen twine), and garlic to the melted butter.  The next time I will wait until the onion starts to soften, before adding the thyme and garlic.  I noticed that the garlic almost burned before the onions were ready.  Adding it later will keep it from overcooking.  I cooked the mixture until the onions were completely soft and translucent.  This took about 12 minutes in total.

Once the onions were soft, I turned the burner up to medium-high and added the tomato paste.  I cooked the tomato paste until it started to caramelize, stirring often.  You know you are there when you start to see glistening brown spots.  This took about five or six minutes.

After the caramelization started, I added the tomatoes with the juices, one teaspoon of sugar, four cups of water, and four cups of homemade chicken stock to the pot.  You can use all water, but I like the added dimension of flavor that comes from using stock.  I turned the heat up to high and brought the pot to a simmer.  Simmer is just below boiling, some bubbling but not to the point of a rolling boil.  I brought the temperature back to medium and simmered it for about 55 minutes.  The soup reduced down to about two quarts.  

I took the pot off of the heat and let it cool slightly.  After pulling the thyme bundle out of the soup, I pureed it using an immersion blender until it was smooth.  If you are using a blender, you will need to do this in several batches.  Do not overload the blender with hot ingredients as there is a potential to blow scalding liquid out of the top of the blender.    

I stirred in 1/4 cup of cream and simmered it for another 15 minutes to allow the flavors to come together.  I seasoned the soup with salt, fresh pepper, and the remaining sugar.  Season according to your personal taste.  You can add more cream as well.

You can make the soup up to two days ahead of time.  Just cool, cover and chill the soup before adding the cream.  Rewarm the soup and then add the cream and the seasonings.

I garnished the soup with fresh basil and served it with grilled cheese sandwiches…yum!

Chris suggested that I add the basil while the soup is cooking as well.  I also had a thought that crumbled bacon would add an extra dimension to the soup.  I will give these ideas a shot next time and update with my results.

I found my base recipe on Epicurious.com.