Creamy Tomato Soup
This is my idea of the quintessential creamy tomato soup. If you use sweet, fresh, dry-farmed early girls, you’ll find the resulting soup to be balanced and delicious before you even add the cream. If your tomatoes are more acidic, the cream will help balance the acidity as will a little extra salt.
Ingredients
Prepare the Tomato Juice
In a Large Pot, Make the Soup Base
Instructions
Wash and de-stem the fresh tomatoes. Place them in a medium pot over low heat, cover, and simmer until they are soft and break up easily when pushed against the side of the pot with a spoon, about 20 minutes. Run the cooked tomatoes through a food mill. Set aside the strained juice and pulp to be used in the soup and discard the skins and seeds left behind in the mill.
In a medium 3 or 4 quart stock pot, melt the butter and sauté the diced onion, celery, and carrot. When the vegetables are tender, after about 8 minutes, add the flour and stir to incorporate it into the melted butter until no dry flour remains. Add the water and whisk or stir briskly over medium heat until the mixture thickens slightly. Add the brown sugar, cloves, 1 T kosher salt and strained tomatoes. Simmer for 20 to 30 minutes to allow flavors to meld.
Turn off the heat and using an immersion blender, blend the soup to a creamy smoothness. Alternatively, blend it in batches in a traditional blender or a food processor and return it to the pot.
Stir in the heavy cream and freshly ground black pepper. Taste for salt.
To dress this up, you can opt to not mix the heavy cream into the whole pot of soup. Instead, drizzle some heavy cream in swirls into each bowl and garnish with freshly chopped or torn basil leaves.
As with any tomato soup, a buttery grilled cheese sandwich is a perfect companion.
