Tomato season is just getting started and most of the ones we’re eating are the small “Raindrop” tomatoes
We had 3 regular tomatoes from the garden turn red, but each had a blemish that would need to be cut out. Then, Bert came home from camp with 4 tomatoes each in a plastic shell. They looked great but I knew they weren’t local and fresh. While we were eating the small tomatoes, I knew we’d ignore the big ones until they spoiled on the counter!
I wondered how hard it would be to make a small batch of tomato soup…I had a memory in mind of a lovely bowl of tomato soup my mother had made…MANY years ago. Somehow, the cans of condensed tomato soup just didn’t taste like my memory!
First, I looked up the recipe for “Fresh Tomato Soup” in my Joy of Cooking cookbook.
Sounded like the same procedure when I cook tomatoes in preparation for canning. I even had a fresh onion from the garden. I took the 7 tomatoes I had on the kitchen table and weighed them…almost 3 pounds! Good Enough!
NOTE: You can skip all the instruction below about preparing the tomatoes and just use several cans of diced tomatoes. Keep reading!
Next, each tomato needed to be trimmed and blemishes cut out. I cut an X on the bottom of each one. I got a pan of water ready to boil so I could dip each tomato into the hot water. In one minute, the skins would loosen so they would be easy to peel.
I lined the tomatoes up by the stove and put 4 and then 3 in the boiling water. After a minute I moved them to ice water. The skins were beginning to come off.
Of course, the steam clouded my camera!
I noticed the recipe said to remove the seeds. It wasn’t hard to just get rid of the seed pocket in the commercial tomatoes. Our tomatoes had hardly any developed seeds!
NOTE: If you have no interest in starting with fresh tomatoes, I think you could easily begin with a few cans of diced tomatoes and jump down to the step below that has the diced tomatoes cooking with chopped onion and go from there!
I had the onion ready to put in the pot with the cut tomatoes and simmered them on the stove.
After about 45 minutes everything looked pretty soft. I poured the whole pile into the blender and in less than a minute there were no chunks! Of course, I poured the pureed tomatoes/onions from the blender into a container before I took a picture of the blender! I put this container in the refrigerator until lunch time.
When it was time for lunch, I put the cooked pureed tomatoes/onions into a saucepan and started warming them up.
I added about a tablespoon of sugar, a teaspoon of salt, a sprinkle of pepper and a teaspoon of Basil flakes. I let this simmer about 10 minutes. Finally, I added about 1/4 cup of coconut milk. Bert added additional regular milk to his bowl.
Very tasty!!
I know it seems like it was a lot of work, but if I’m cooking tomatoes anyway, why not make a good meal out of them while I’m cooking! Even if you start with plain canned diced tomatoes, it will end up tasting pretty good! Enjoy!
ps. Just for fun, I looked up the ingredients in Campbell’s Condensed Tomato Soup. The serving size was 1/2 cup and was 90 calories! Here’s the ingredient list for that can of soup: Tomato Puree (Water, Tomato Paste), Water, Wheat Flour, Sugar, Contains Less Than 2% Of: Salt, Potassium Salt, Natural Flavoring, Citric Acid, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Celery Extract, Garlic Oil. Contains: Wheat.
I think my soup tasted just fine without the wheat and “natural flavoring!”
If you have comments or questions, please contact me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com.