If your first thought seeing this is “Wow, two soup posts in a row! These guys must have a liquid diet!” You aren’t completely wrong… We both LOVE soup because its generally inexpensive to make, can be eaten all week long, and is delicious beyond belief!
But seriously, we have tried twice to take good photos of other cooking creations with mixed success, and certainly not the consistency we’d like for our new blog! We might be investing in something more versatile than the iPhone camera soon…
But I digress…Today we have a personal favorite of… well… most people who remember what it’s like to grow up! Tomato Soup brings back personal memories of those tiny canned concentrated soups that, when mixed with a can of milk, took on an almost supernatural ability to sooth colds and fix bad days… So we had to make it!
Here’s what you need!
-Tomatoes, make sure they are ripe! (Seriously, at least 9-10 to fill half the Le Creuset)
-2-3 Carrots
-1 Large Yellow Onion
-3-4 Cloves of Garlic
-A few cups of Chicken broth (or bouillon if that’s your preference, that’s what we use!)
-Cream (heavy or light cream is fine, but be aware that this ingredient is to taste!)
-Can of diced crushed tomatoes (they impart a little extra tomato punch)
-A splash of apple cider vinegar
-Dried basil
-Some kind of fresh herb for garnish (we use cilantro, but fresh basil is the traditional choice here!).
——-> NOTE! Other veggies can be added! Lots of people throw in a couple sticks of celery, and other veggies might lend themselves well to this also! Just remember that the more you put in, the less the tomato will be represented!
How its done!
- The first step is prep! You’ll need to skin your tomatoes. Failure to skin your tomatoes results in an end product that is grainy in texture and leaves bits stuck in your teeth! Skinning tomatoes is easy! With a knife, make a small X on the bottom of each tomato. Then, boil them for 30-60 seconds. Immediately dump them into an ice bath after and then the skins will slide right off!
- Roughly chop your carrots and any other veggies you want to use, including your onion and garlic. Cook these in a large soup pot on medium high until they start to brown up! Don’t let this stuff burn though, if anything burns, it will carry through to the whole pot of soup!
Blanching the tomatoes and waiting to start cooking the carrot and onion! (Don’t mind the wipes on the counter, we had a minor blanching incident!) 
This is about what you want for size when you chop up the skinned tomatoes! - On medium heat, cook the veggies for awhile! You aren’t looking to cook them straight through, just enough to heat them up a bit! Pro tip: a sprinkling of salt will pull the juices straight out of the tomatoes. This will help you start your base!
- Once everything start to pull together well and when you start seeing some juices seeping out of your veg mix, its time to add your chicken broth, vinegar and the can of crushed tomatoes! There isn’t really a clear science on how much you’ll need here, but remember that its only a few cups worth of broth! The ultimate goal is to puree your soup, so too much broth equates to a liquidy soup. You definitely don’t want to fully cover your veg mixture! That’s way too much broth!
Why bother with buying broth when you can mix your own?! 
Remember, no more than a tablespoon or so! 
Something about canned tomatoes helps this base become incredible! - When you have everything added, stir it up and bring it to a light boil! The chosen veggies won’t require a lot of persuasion to puree if you give them some time on simmer! Remember my soup advice: The ingredients like to get to know one another, you just have to give them a little bit of time!
- This part is the easy part that we all love. Pour yourself a glass of wine and enjoy a book or your favorite show for awhile. All good soup requires a little bit of time! At the minimum, give the pot 15-30 minutes to come together. At the most, you can let it simmer like this for hours (just be mindful about how much evaporation is occurring!)
- Now comes the excitement! Using either a stand blender or immersion blender, thoroughly puree your soup mix! This is every bit as easy as it sounds, just be mindful now to create too many bubbles (which you can avoid by fully submerging your immersion blender head!) or else you’ll end up with a frothy bubbly mix. You want absolute consistency in this stage! Don’t forget to start adding in some of that basil if you want it! Herbage is always a good thing!
8. You can let it sit like this if you want/need to but once you’re ready its time to add some cream! Keep in mind that this phase is all to taste, but remember you can always add more, but you can’t take any out! So be conservative and taste each time you stir some in!
9. The objective of the cream is threefold! First, it imparts texture (which you can tune using all those wonderful receptors in your mouth!). Second, the cream cuts the acid content of the tomatoes and the apple cider vinegar. If you properly balance it all out, then you’ll end up with that perfect balanced flavor that will remind you of your childhood. Third, the cream can fix some viscosity issues that may have popped up earlier in the cooking process. If you boiled too much off, adding this additional liquid will help. Just beware! Using cream to correct this issue rather than using broth and more time boiling it all together can result in an overly creamy end product. This just doesn’t taste right at the end!
10. Your end product should look like the above picture! Smooth consistency, nice light red color, some herbs sprinkled in, and a taste to die for! Garnish however you please and do yourself the favor of enjoying this meal with a grilled cheese!
The end product speaks for itself!
Savory Sweet Bitters 
Love it!
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