I can't think of anything better than hot soup and warm toasty sandwiches on a cold day! So I thought I would share with you my favorite tomato soup recipe! I adapted it from a Southern Living recipe in their October 2010 edition... their recipe looks amazing, but I'm not a fan of buying fresh herbs. I end up wasting a bunch of it! (I will hopefully have an herb garden this summer...) The recipe yielded a TON of soup, too! With two people eating the soup, it would have taken us eating it every day for a week to finish it! All of that said, I put together a recipe similar to theirs and just as tasty, in my opinion! The best thing about this recipe is it's very customizable. Depending on your preferences you can add more of anything (chicken broth, seasoning, honey...), and it still tastes great! Soup is so easy to make; you almost can't go wrong!
Ingredients:
1/2 onion, diced
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 25 oz. can Diced tomatoes with basil, garlic, and oregano
1/2 cup chicken broth (give or take)
1 tsp.-1 Tbsp. Italian seasoning
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 Tbsp. honey
1 clove of garlic, minced (about 1/2 tsp. of minced garlic in a jar)
salt and pepper to taste
First, I dice up half an onion while I heat up the olive oil over med./high heat in a large pot. Side-note: I love my Kitchen Aid chopper so much! Kyle surprised me with it a few months ago because I was having a bad day! My spirits were lifted, and he knew I would be pretty excited to make him a tasty meal! :)
Stir the onions around a little bit, and let them cook until tender. I didn't do it this time, but you could also throw the garlic in with the onions. Just be careful to not burn the garlic!
-Once the onions are tender, dump the whole can of tomatoes (juice and all) into the pot.
-Decide at this point how thick you want your soup to be. The more chicken broth you put in, the thinner your soup will be. I added more chicken broth than I wanted to so I opened a small can of plain diced tomatoes and dumped them in. (It wouldn't be a bad idea to swish the chicken broth around your empty seasoned tomato can to make sure you get ALL that seasoned goodness! )
-Now you will bring the tomatoes, chicken broth, and onions to a boil.
-Once the mixture reaches a boil, turn the heat down and let it simmer for about 20 minutes. Stir occasionally.
-Pull out your blender, and get ready to make a little bit of a mess. You will need to take the stopper out of the top of the blender lid to avoid exploding tomato soup all over the kitchen. (I'm speaking from experience...)
-I couldn't fit all of the soup into my blender at once so I poured half of the soup into the blender and pulsed it 3 or 4 times.
-You can either dump it back into the pot with the rest of the soup and leave the texture alone (leaving bigger chunks of tomato), or like I did you can switch out the batches and blend the rest of the soup.
-Next, you add in the Italian seasoning, lemon juice, honey, garlic (if you didn't saute it with the onions), salt, and pepper. (All of these ingredients can be increased or decreased depending on your preferences!)
Tomato Soup is served! Southern Living suggests serving it with fried okra and grilled pimiento cheese sandwiches. (The okra tastes great in it!) I have thought about adding a little bit of sausage, tortellini, and parmesan to a batch... but we usually eat it sprinkled with parmesan with grilled turkey and swiss sandwiches on the side. No matter how you choose to eat it, it's definitely better than plain ole' canned tomato soup!!
