We DID it! We made it through the long winter, and today begins my FAVORITE season of the year! HELLO, SPRINGTIME! YAY!
One of the things that helped us through all the cold days was this delicious tomato soup! I used tomatoes from our garden last summer to make batches and batches of it, and I tucked it all away in the freezer. And now it’s time to plant tomatoes again! If you are growing tomatoes this spring like we are, then you might want to try this soup for yourself come harvest time.
BACKSTORY
I’ve planted regular slicing tomatoes for years, but two years ago was the first time I tried plum tomatoes, as well. So many people I had talked with raved about San Marzano tomatoes, so that’s what I planted…2 of them. The results were not stellar, and I didn’t get many plum tomatoes that year.
Then last year, Big Eagle came home from the Happy Hill feed store with 3 nondescript plum tomato plants. I wanted 3 in case I got the same poor results again. But lo and behold! They were happy plants, and I got more plum tomatoes than I knew what to do with! I like the plum tomatoes for salsa, because they have less liquid content than slicing tomatoes. However, I canned all the salsa I wanted and STILL had plum tomatoes coming out of my ears.
Enter my daughter Cara! Yay! She and her family were staying in our addition temporarily, and she made this tomato soup one day. She offered me some at lunch, and it was so dang good. She’s the one who suggested I use my surplus plum tomatoes to make this soup and freeze it. She’s a GENIUS!
The Soup
This has got to be one of the easiest soups I’ve ever made. The hardest part is prepping the tomatoes. All you really have to do is peel them, though, so it’s not that bad.
Ingredients
Only 5 or 6 ingredients for this delicious soup!
*12 to 15 medium-sized plum tomatoes
*1/2 large onion
*4 tablespoons European butter (preferably unsalted)
*1 1/2 cups chicken stock
*1/2 teaspoon salt
*heavy cream (optional)
Step 1: Peel Tomatoes
I wash my tomatoes when I bring them in from the garden. Then when I prep them, I start by scoring a small X in the bottom of each tomato. This makes them easier to peel after blanching.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. While it’s heating up, I prepare an ice bath in the sink, so I can give the tomatoes a quick cool down once they’re out of the boiling water.
I place half of the tomatoes at a time into a metal basket. Once the water is boiling, I lower the basket into it and give it 20 seconds. You only want to get them to where they’ll peel. You don’t want to cook the tomato! Since they float on the water, I use the back of a spoon to give them all a few little dunks under the water during the 20 seconds.
The pot and basket I use are the same ones Big Eagle uses when he boils shrimp outside. In previous years, I used a slotted spoon to drop them into a pot one at a time. The metal basket is much easier to use. Don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.
As soon as the 20 seconds are up, lift the basket out of the water and gently dump out the tomatoes into your ice bath.
I swish them around a little bit and then let them cool in the bath. Meantime, the water should be coming back to a boil, and once it does, I repeat the blanching and ice bath with the other half of the tomatoes.
Next I use a paring knife to pull the skin off of each tomato. Here are some of the peeled tomatoes:
Step 2: Assemble the rest of the ingredients and put it all together.
Since you’re going to blend everything after cooking, there’s no need to do a fine chop on the onion. I cut the half into 6 pieces.
I melt the butter on the stove in a Dutch oven. Using the European butter DOES make a difference. It has a higher butter fat content than our butter, so it really helps improves the flavor and the texture of the soup. I used Kerrygold, but other brands are fine, too.
Add the cut onion, the chicken stock, and the salt, and stir.
Carefully add in all the peeled tomatoes.
Bring it all to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.
Let it simmer uncovered for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally. After 40 minutes, it will look like this:
Lastly, I let it cool just a little, and then I use an immersion blender to puree it.
Here it is all complete:
Isn’t it beautiful? And it is SO GOOD! If you want to use the heavy cream, you would add it in now to your liking.
Step 3: Storing
At HEB, I purchased reusable food storage containers that can go in the freezer. Once the soup had cooled down, I just ladled it into the containers, popped on the lids, labeled them, and into the freezer they went!
I don’t know how many batches of this soup I made, but it was A LOT! I was making two batches at a time, since I had so many tomatoes, so I had two Dutch ovens going at the same time. When my daughter and her family left to move to Houston, they took some with them, and I’ve given them more since then. They like to add the heavy cream to it right before serving for additional flavor. I froze a few batches of it with cream in it, but it was one of the first ingredients I ran out of, so then I started freezing it without the cream, and Big Eagle and I like it just as well. When I have fresh basil, I may try adding some of that also.
This is how much is still in our freezer:
Looks like maybe 5 more meals.
Cara’s recipe was adapted from this one at inspiredtaste.net. He uses canned tomatoes, so if you don’t grow your own or you don’t want to use fresh, you could do that, too.
Please let me know if you try this soup! It really is so good for being so simple.
This post linked to The GRAND Social