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A good tomato soup recipe is easy to come by but can vary in flavor and texture. To me, a tomato soup should be savory with a hint of sweet, have a smooth pureed texture and should be bright but not sour. The key to avoiding a sour flavor is to use canned San Marzano tomatoes over fresh tomatoes. You can always use fresh, but if they aren’t perfectly ripe, you’ll end up with a tasteless or worse, sour soup.
To achieve that perfect texture, we add half & half and blend everything together with a large blender like a Vitamix or an immersion blender. You can always use a traditional blender, it will most likely take several rounds of blending. The immersion blender is handheld and goes directly into the pot to blend everything. They make life much easier. At twenty bucks a pop, it’s definitely a small appliance worth investing in. If you using an immersion blender you should first break up the tomatoes after they’ve softened in the pot for thirty minutes. You can use a meat masher or a wooden spoon.
Contrary to many tomato soup recipes, this one does not utilize fresh basil. Fresh basil can be very hit or miss as far as flavor. Similar to cilantro, fresh basil can sometimes have a soapy taste. To avoid getting a bad batch altogether, this recipe calls for dried basil. It also has dried oregano, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper and sugar. The sugar is necessary to balance the acidity of the tomatoes. The carrots also help balance the acidity of the tomatoes. Don’t leave either out in fear of making a sweet tomato soup. That won’t happen. It creates a depth of flavor that balances not only the acidity but the savoriness of the soup. If you love Panera Bread’s tomato soup, then you’re going to love this tomato soup recipe.
Be sure to grab the recipe for my bacon grilled cheese! It pairs perfectly with this soup!
Creamy Tomato Soup
Ingredients
- 12 oz bacon cooked, crumbled
- 1/4 c rendered bacon fat
- 2 tbsp salted butter
- 1 yellow onion diced
- 2 large carrots peeled, diced
- 5 cloves garlic smashed
- 1 tbsp double concentrated tomato paste
- 2 28 oz cans San Marzano tomatoes including the juice
- 2 c chicken stock Kitchen Basics
- 1 tbsp Better than Bouillon chicken base heaping
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 1 tsp dried basil
- 1/2 tsp dried oregano
- 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
- 1 c half & half
Instructions
- Dice bacon and cook over medium heat until crisp. Remove from the pot and discard any burt bits at the bottom.
- Keep about 1/4 cup of the rendered bacon fat in the pot.
- Add butter to the bacon fat and allow to melt.
- Turn heat down to just under medium. Add diced onions and carrots and cook 5 minutes.
- Add smashed garlic cloves, stir and cook for 5 minutes.
- Add tomato paste, stir and cook for 1 minute. Add canned tomatoes, including all the juice from the cans, chicken stock, Better than Boullion chicken base and a pinch of salt.
- Simmer for 30 minutes with the lid off.
- Add everything in the pot to a large blender or use an immersion blender to blend until smooth. Wait for the soup to cool down for 5 minutes before blending.
- Add the soup back to the pot along with the sugar, salt, pepper, dried basil, dried oregano, red pepper flakes, and half & half. Stir and simmer for at least 1 hour.
- If time allows, let the soup simmer, covered on low for hours. It gets better with time.
- Stir and serve warm.