I love Tomato Basil Soup- I mean, this is true comfort food to me. I know that I have a recipe for Golden Heirloom Tomato Soup (08/07), which is like the glammed up version. But this is the real, old fashioned kind that you get at a deli, or that your grandma made you for lunch when you were a kid- you know?
I bought some beautiful campari tomatoes on the vine at Costco! (yes, not from the farmers market, but from the super store!) I meant to make some salad with them, but they kept sitting there staring at me day after day, and this morning, I broke down and roasted them for soup.
The beauty of a great tomato (from Costco or otherwise!) is that you don’t have to add a million ingredients to have them taste great. This soup is pretty strait forward and not in the least labor intensive (yay!!) It also takes under an hour, most of which you have just left things to cook (yay again!!).
Serve hot with a grilled cheese sandwich for maximum comfort ☺
Roasted Tomato Basil Soup, serves 8
6lbs tomatoes (if on vine still, just roast on the vine)
(Also, Costco conveniently sells 2 lb boxes of campari tomatoes on the vine)
8 garlic cloves, whole in paper
½ cup of olive oil
4 Tbs butter
2 large yellow onions (roughly chopped)
handful of basil, (see picture for how much a handful is!)
4 cups chicken stock
1 cup heavy cream
kosher salt
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Arrange tomatoes and garlic on a sheet pan. Drizzle the tomatoes with ½ cup of olive oil. Sprinkle with kosher salt.
Roast tomatoes and garlic in the oven for 30 minutes, and then remove pan from the oven to cool.
In a soup pot, melt butter and add chopped onions. Sweat until tender (it is ok if they get some brown caramelization on them).
Squeeze the roasted garlic from the paper, and remove all of the stems and vines from the roasted tomatoes.
Dump all of the tomatoes, garlic and juice into the soup pot with the onions.
Add the handful of basil.
Add the chicken stock. Turn the heat to medium-high, and let the soup cook for about 15 minutes.
Remove the soup from the heat. Using an immersion blender, puree the soup until completely smooth.
Stir in (do not blend!!) the heavy cream.
Now is the time to season to taste. I used about 1 tsp kosher salt for the very sweet tomatoes I used, but let your own palate be the judge!
Serve hot and garnish with fresh basil or shaved parmesan.
Enjoy!
Dear Heather,
I loved your home as seen in “Traditional Home” 11/09. I save these mags and revisit them I found your website and “Wow” I’ve been in a cooking rut. I downloaded frittata, Choc’lt pots of cream, meatloaf & this soup recipes. “Thank you” for sharing.
Sincerely,
Tammy
Hi Tammy! Thanks so much. I hope that you enjoy the recipes! If you have any requests, just leave them here 🙂
This is my favorite soup – I will be making this soon – thanks for this great recipe!
I recommend it strongly to everyone i was not a fan of tomato soup till Sunday this week
I made it and it was a success with everyone including myself thanks Heather
Thank you so much Sephie!! I am so excited that you enjoyed it 🙂
How bad would it be if I substituted skim milk instead of cream
I was wondering the same thing Stefanie! I love the flavor that heavy cream adds to recipes, but usually pass them up because of the fat content 🙁
I think that you guys can omit the heavy cream all together and it will still be really delicious!
Try using fat free greek yogurt instead of heavy cream, mine turned out yummy!
This is hands down THE MOST DELICIOUS tomato soup I have ever tasted! This was my first time making tomato soup and I was intimidated at first but this was so easy! And the aroma of the roasted tomatoes and garlic was just divine! I didn’t have a blender so I chopped the onion really finely and allowed the soup to simmer before I poured it through a fine mesh sieve and pushed it down with a wooden spoon, got most of the tomatoes out and the soup was to die for… LITERALLY!
Such simplicity, such deliciousness! Thank you for this recipe!
So happy that you enjoyed it! It is one of my favorite soup recipes Sam!
I’ve been searching for the perfect tomato soup recipe – THIS IS IT!!!!! I absolutely love it! I did not have cream, so I used 2% milk and its great. BUT – roasting the tomatoes made a mess in my oven. The olive oil splattered all over. Did I do something wrong, or is this just the price to pay for such fabulous soup?!
I’m going to make this soup this weekend for a family party. It looks delicious! However
I’m thinking of substituting some of the fresh tomatoes with canned. What do you think the conversion would be?
it just calls for 6lbs of fresh tomatoes- so I would just use the equivalent in canned tomatoes, or 3 28ounce cans
The tomatoes are in the oven right now and it smells wonderful! I can hardly wait to taste it. I’m thinking about adding rice after blending. Im sure this will become something I always have in my freezer.
Would any tomatoes work, or are compari the best ones?
any tomatoes are great!
Ok, thanks! I am using tomatoes that are a bit larger and not o the vine, just your regular all-purpose tomatoes. Mainly because the vine ripened ones and campari at the store were expensive and didn’t look good. I will post and let you know how it turns out with these tomatoes!
So I just finished the soup, and the “all-purpose” tomatoes worked well. I roasted them on 375F and for an extra 5-10 minutes because they were much bigger. The only down part is that there was a woody type part near where the stem would be and it was difficult to cut them out after roasting because they were slippery and hot! I don’t think it turned out as sweet as it would if I used campari tomatoes, but I let the ones I had sit and get really ripe and dark red. All in all, it was delicious! I love that there is no added sugars etc. and uses fresh whole foods 😀 I saved half, and used the other half to make your spicy tomato lentil soup, which also turned out GREAT! Thanks!
I noticed someone else posted about the oil splatter in their oven…. i just went to cook something else in the oven (its been a few hours since the tomatoes were in there) and there is a burning smell coming from it. My guess is that the oil splattered. Does anyone else have this problem? Maybe I should use a deep baking dish for roasting tomatoes.
Thanks for your feedback Emily! I’m glad the tomatoes turned out! Sorry if the oil splattered- maybe using a baking dish is better?
My oven ended up a mess after I roasted the tomatoes, the olive oil must have spattered in there and caused my oven to smoke the next time I used it. I couldn’t just wipe it clean as the oil got sticky so I had to set my oven to “clean” and get rid of it that way. I’m wondering if roasting the tomatoes in a glass pyrex with a lid would work, any suggestions?
sorry NC! what a mess. Yes- try a lid!
Ya, I think I might try a deep baking dish next time. It wasn’t really too big of deal, after a few minutes the splatter burned off. This is my new go-to recipe for soup 😀
I cant get over how delicious this looks… those beautiful roasted tomatoes!!! What a fantastic recipe!
Made this tonight with a combo of Campari and regular ol’ tomatoes on the vine. I’m glad I went with a half and half, I think all Campari would have been a bit sweet for me. I did roast on the vine but was aware of the trouble removing the stems while the tomatoes were hot because of a post I read here, so I roasted the tomatoes earlier in the day so they could cool down some before I had to get handsy with them, thanks for that tip! Also, this was too brothy for us, we like thicker soups (mainly so we don’t spill down the front of our shirts, ha ha), so next time I’ll cut back on the chick broth. The garlic was not overpowering at all. I used 12 cloves, next time I’ll up it to 16. We love garlic though, keeping away vampires and all. The roasted flavor of the sweet tomatoes was really delish on a summer evening. Served with grilled cheese and basil sandwiches. Just a super yummy and very healthy soup, thanks!!
A little late to the game but ive used a little swirl of white truffle oil in my tomato soup to add that umami/richness to it without adding cream–I did that to make my soup vegan soup and it was a hit. You can get it at trader joes for the budget version or any fancy food store.
Thanks Dorothy! great tip 🙂
How does this soup taste a day later? I would like to make for Christmas but make it the day before. Thanks!
It is even better the next day Crystal!
Hello everyone! Has anyone tried to replace the cream with coconut milk out of curiosity? I’m going to use this recipe as a base for the spicy lentil soup and thought it would be a wonderful and healthy replacement. 🙂
Lee Anna, please let me know how that is!! I need to make a dairy free version for my daughter, so I was going to use coconut or almond milk. I would love to hear if you like it?
Loved this! I added a roasted red pepper and used goat cheese instead of cream. I also used only 2 cups of stock, mostly because I was running out of room in my pot. I used the costco campari tomatoes, but this recipe will be perfect for the end of summer tomato overstock. It made a large batch, I froze about half of it for later. I wonder if anyone has tried canning it yet?