Tomato Soup Recipe: A Family Favorite

With the onset of Fall (FINALLY), I’m pulling out the stove-top recipes again. Tomato soup is one of our favorites! I think it’s just because we pair it with grilled cheese, and who doesn’t love a dairy-riddled-carbohydrate, but it’s still perfect for chilly and/or rainy days. As a mama I love this recipe because I bury 800 vegetables in it, and my kids have no idea.

A note for the non-tomato people out there: David is also a VERY non-tomato person, and he loves this soup.

Per the usual “Whitney cooking style”, I got this tomato soup recipe from a friend years ago, and it’s evolved into something entirely my own. I like it because I usually have everything on hand, even the celery, because I chop and freeze it whenever I have an extra stalk or two.

My friend made hers in a crock pot, but I’m not a big fan of counter-top appliances, and I’ve found that stove-top works just as fine, if not better.

As a quick side-by-side comparison, here is her original tomato soup recipe. Italicized comments represent “Whitney cooking style”.

Oil or butter – we use avocado oil usually, because the smoke point is high and yay, Costco
1 cup chopped carrots – or like half a bag of those little baby carrots
1/2 cup chopped onion – or a whole onion, whatevs
3 stocks of celery whole – I chop mine, though
4 cans diced tomato – ish
About 2/3 box of chicken stock – ish. I use homemade stock, and I usually salt my stock.
2 tbs basil or about 4 fresh leaves – or a whole bunch of fresh leaves, if you have a plant
1 tbs of oregano – yup
1 tbs crushed red pepper – I just add a pinch. 1 tablespoon is way too much heat for our household
A couple whole cloves – I leave these out
1 bay leaf – yup
1-2 minced garlic cloves – definitely need 3 crushed garlic cloves, fresh

My friend’s tomato soup recipe instructions called for cooking it in a crockpot for about 6 hours, then removing the bay leaf and cloves, pureeing everything else, and then stirring in a cup of heavy cream, half a cup of parmesan cheese, and seasoning to taste with salt and pepper.

Here’s the Whitney-style on that: Add cream, a whole bunch.

Cooking Tomato Soup IRL

OK, now that we have the written instructions out of the way, here’s what this looks like IRL:

First up, I have pre-chopped carrots, onion, and celery in a “stock bag”. I love freezing veggies like this because it’s efficient, but it’s also fancy. Per Food Network,

“The French flavor base called mirepoix is a combination of onion, carrot and celery generally cut to the same size. It’s used in a ratio that’s 2 parts onion to 1 part celery and carrot. Saute in Butter. Mirepoix is the start of many French dishes, such as coq au vin and lamb stew.“

Frozen mirepoix/stock bag — Chopped veggies from a freezer stock bag.

Into the pot they go, along with some avocado oil. But, according to Food Network, you can apparently use butter, which, imho, is never a bad idea.

Frozen mirepoix on the stove, the foundation of a good tomato soup — Veggies into the pot, with some oil.

Sauté around, then add spices:

crushed red pepper — Add red pepper and a bay leaf.

Friend-tomato-soup recipe says add four cans of tomatoes. But since I had started with a heavy batch of mirepoix, I added five cans: two large and three small. Also a note on tomatoes: while almost all of America uses canned tomatoes, I do think the brand matters. Cento, San Marcos, or Roma are usually my preference, but Kirkland organic is the majority of tomatoes had on hand this day.

tomatoes for tomato soup — This is how many tomatoes I put in.

Here’s my frozen chicken stock. This was my last frozen batch, so time to make some more of that, too!

chicken stock, homemade, from the freezer — Chicken stock from the freezer.

And here we are: pre-simmer, pre-puree, and sans minced garlic. I think the garlic press was in the dishwasher, and I knew we were going to use the immersion blender on it anyway, so I just left the garlic cloves whole. But I don’t think it had quite the same flavor this time around, so I would say to get your garlic cloves pressed! And sautéed in butter with your mirepoix!

the blend of tomato soup is sauteeing on the stove — Let it simmer.

We pureed the tomato soup after this, but I didn’t get a picture. And I say “we pureed it” because David apparently does get excited about countertop appliances and wanted to use the immersion blender. You can also pour it into a mixer and puree it, and then pour it back into the pot. I’ve used this method before, and while it makes for a smoother-in-texture soup, it also makes a mess. And at the end of it all, we prefer a chunkier texture than kitchen soup all over the walls of our kitchen.

Don’t forget to remove the bay leaf before pureeing!

After you’re pureed it, add cream. I used one pint, because of aforementioned dairy-and-carbohydrate addiction but you could easily add two pints because you don’t have my metabolism.