Got extra tomatoes? This Roasted Garden Tomato Soup can help with that!
Maybe you brought home a bushel from the Farmer's Market like I did? I got carried away and bought more than I could use. It is still very hot here so they were ripening in my kitchen very quickly. This soup was a great way to use up some of that bounty!
You can roast the garlic and caramelize the onions at the same time the tomatoes are roasting . As I have indicated in previous posts I often make up extra roasted garlic bulbs and extra caramelized onions. I took the opportunity this time to make extra while the tomatoes were roasting in the oven. Freeze the extra and you will have them handy to make this Creamy Hummus with caramelized onions
or this delicious Garlic Goat Cheese Souffle
But... back to the soup! Roasting the tomatoes concentrates the flavours and reduces the wateriness. It is an essential step to making this soup a nice consistency.
After the ingredients are roasted I blend them in my Vitamix blender. These are amazingly powerful machines. They will liquefy the tomato, skins and all, to a smooth even consistency. If your blender or processor is not as powerful as a Vitamix you may want to strain the soup through a sieve at the end to achieve a silky uniform consistency.
This will make 2 servings as a main or 4 servings as an appetizer.
So now when you see people with baskets of extra tomatoes in late summer you can make this amazing Roasted Garden Tomato Soup!
Enjoy!
Ingredients
- 4 medium field tomatoes cut into large chunks
- 1+1 Tbsps olive oil divided
- 1 bulb fresh garlic
- 1 medium sweet onion
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- 2 sprigs fresh thyme
- 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
- ¼ teaspoon sea salt
- 2 oz fresh parmesan
- ½-1 cup whole milk or Half and Half (to desired consistency of soup)
- Basil leaves and parmesan shavings for garnish
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Pour 1 tablespoon olive oil over tomato chunks and sprinkle with sea salt. Leave the skin on the garlic bulb and trim a bit off the top of the bulb to expose the cloves. Sit the bulb on a square of tin foil big enough to wrap the bulb in. Drizzle a bit of olive oil on top of the garlic bulb. Close up the foil around the garlic. Roast tomatoes and garlic in oven for 1 hour. (Take the opportunity to roast extra bulbs because you can freeze the roasted garlic pulp.)
- Cut onion in to thin slices and quarter the slices. (Again -take the opportunity to caramelize more than 1 onion because you can freeze them too.) Heat the remaining olive oil in a heavy skillet. Add onions, thyme leaves and brown sugar. Heat over medium low heat for about 15 minutes. Add red wine vinegar and continue to cook over low heat until onions are golden coloured. This may take 5-15 minutes depending on how many onions you have in your skillet.
- When tomatoes and garlic are done roasting put the tomatoes and the pulp from 1 clove of the roasted garlic in the blender. Reserve the remaining roasted garlic for another use.
- Add ⅓ cup of caramelized onions and the parmesan to the blender. Blend on low for a minute or 2 to mix all the ingredients. Then blend on high another 2-3 minutes or until the soup is an even consistency with no sign of bits of skins.
- Add the cream and sea salt and blend again. Depending on the size of your tomatoes and the consistency you want, start with ½ cup of cream and add more if you want to thin it out a bit more.
- Strain through a sieve if you can see bits of skin.
- Divide among soup bowls. Depending on how much cream you added you may want to give each bowl 30 seconds to 1 minute in the microwave to ensure the soup is nice and hot.
- Garnish, serve and enjoy!
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