A good tutorial to get you started making soup from fresh tomatoes. Perfectly colorful and so flavorful. Of course, excellent with a grilled cheese sandwich or ham and cheese panini.
slotted spoon or "skimmer" or "spider" spoon for lifting the tomatoes out of the boiling water
food processor
medium-sized pot for soup
Ingredients
6ripe fresh tomatoes 6-8 tomatoes is fine. Even a little overripe is ok
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
bunchfresh basil
1/2tspsaltand more, to taste
Instructions
Using sub-par, overripe tomatoes is perfectly acceptable in this recipe. In fact, it's pretty neat to use something a little past it's prime to make a really good soup.
To make a soup out of fresh tomatoes, you will first have to peel them. Bring a pot of water to a boil, then take the pot off the heat. Plunge the tomatoes into very hot water and let them sit there for about five minutes.
Using a large slotted spoon, lift each tomato out of the hot water and transfer to ice cold water.
Let the tomatoes sit in the cold water for about five minutes.
Lift them out of the water. You will be able to easily wipe the skins off the flesh with just your fingers.
Set them aside while you assemble the rest of your ingredients.
Put all the tomatoes into the bowl of a food processor and puree.
Transfer the tomato puree to a medium-sized pot and simmer for about ten minutes. Remember, all we have in the pot right now is tomato. Simmer on medium heat for about ten minutes. This will reduce the liquid a little and the heat will bring out more tomato flavor.
Add ½ cup heavy cream and stir in some fresh basil leaves. Prepare for an amazing aroma as the oils of the basil warm and mix with the tomato acids and waft up to your nose.
Taste this mixture and add as much salt as you think it needs to taste complete. Start with ½ teaspoon and work your way up.
Serve with additional pieces of ripped up basil leaves and maybe a little dollop of sour cream. A perfect accompaniment to this soup is a grilled sandwich of any kind - but I'm partial to the cheddar cheese variety.
Notes
If you find you'd like to learn more about making soup from scratch using fresh ingredients, please come back to this website often for more recipes, tutorials and lessons. Thank you for being here!Shannon Vavich