Homemade Tomato Soup
Nothing warms us up like a nice hot bowl of soup. I found some tomatoes on sale
at the supermarket, and decided to make a batch of Mom's Homemade Tomato Soup. Yum!
This soup is even better in the summer when the tomatoes are at their best, but
these winter tomatoes made a great soup too!
The ingredients can be found at your local grocery store, or if you're lucky enough to have a garden you
can harvest most of them yourself: tomatoes, celery, parsley, onion, pickling spice, bacon, flour, and (optional) cream.
Chop up the tomatoes, celery, onion and parsley. Don't be too fussy, it's all going to cook down together anyway.
Tie up the pickling spice in a cheesecloth so you can fetch it out later. Put the cheesecloth spices and the
chopped veggies in a large pot and add about 10 cups of water. If it looks like your pot isn't big enough (mine wasn't)
just use two pots and divide things between them. Bring everything to a boil, and turn down to a simmer - let
simmer for about 2 hours.
After a couple hours of simmering, everything will have cooked down together...
(you can see that I've tied my cheesecloth pickling spice sachet to the handle of the pot so I can fetch it out easily)
In the meantime, cut ~ 1/4 pound of bacon into small pieces. Brown the bacon in a pan until almost crispy - do not
drain the fat from the pan. Add about 3 tablespoons of flour to the bacon/bacon fat and stir until the flour browns
a little bit and smells nice and "nutty". Turn off the heat and set this aside.
I ran the cooked soup through a food mill, but you could also use and immersion blender in the pot, or use a blender
to smooth the soup in batches. If you use a blender, be extra careful with the hot soup and only fill the blender
halfway full! The idea is to get the soup "sort of smooth" - I like to still have some texture in mine. If you want
your soup completely smooth - go for it!
Once all your soup is smooth as you like, turn on the heat and bring to a simmer. Add the reserved bacon/flour mixture
to the soup and stir to incorporate. This will thicken the soup slightly and also add wonderful bacon flavor.
If you want a strictly vegetarian soup, just skip the bacon - you may want to thicken with a roux of just vegetable oil
and flour.
If you want to freeze some soup for later, let it cool now and then pack away in freezer containers
Your soup is now ready to eat!
You can have your soup either as is, or add just a splash of cream before serving.
Yum! Another nice thing to add is a grilled-cheese sandwich!
as is...
with cream...
The soup freezes very well, so make extra in the summer when the tomatoes are at their
best, and you'll have hot soup at the ready for those cold winter months!
Enjoy!
Made on 3/01/2013