Joel’s Favorite Tomato Soup Recipe of All Time

Hi everyone. Welcome to my backyard. Today we have a special guest, my lovely wife, Patty. She’s gonna teach us a recipe today, one of our favorites. If you have lots of extra tomatoes and basil in your straw bale garden, which all straw bale gardeners do, you’re gonna love this recipe. Patty, tell us what you’re gonna make for us.

– So as Joe said, we’re gonna make roasted tomato basil soup. Luckily I’m the chef and not the gardener or else we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But the soup is just a few ingredients that again, you’ll have handy. Onions, roasted tomatoes and basil and a few other things and you’ll have soup in no time. It freezes really well so you can enjoy it all year long.

– She’s a soup champion. Last two years, she’s won the Superbowl on Superbowl Sunday where all our friends make soup and we have a blind contest and who’s the winner. Last two years, she’s won it. We’ve got a plaque in the house just to prove it. Thanks for joining us. Come along, she’ll show you step by step. It’s really easy and absolutely wonderful.

– Okay well, the first step in making roasted tomato basil soup is to get three pounds of tomatoes. The beauty of this recipe is you can use any kind of tomato, plumb, Roma, beefsteak, heirloom. I like to use a variety, just from a color as well as flavor perspective. Then you’ll take them and wash them, obviously since you’re bringing them out of the garden. Core them, get then ready to do a rough chop. They don’t need to be small at all. Just maybe half the size of your fist is fine. The key is get them all the same size. So some might need to be cut in half. Others quartered, others more than that. Just the same size so they cook in the same amount of time. Once you have ’em in a rough chop, put them in a bowl. Add a quarter cup of really good olive oil, a tablespoon of kosher salt and a teaspoon and a 1/2 of fresh ground black pepper. And I really recommend kosher salt instead of regular salt. It adds more flavor but less sodium. So that’s just a tip. Once you get it all mixed together nicely, put it in a line baking sheet or jelly roll pan. You’ll wanna line it simply so you’ll have easier clean up later on. Because let’s face it, let’s make this as easy as possible. When you put them on a tray, make sure they’re in a single layer and not too crowded. Because you wanna make sure that they roast and not steam. So we’re gonna roast the tray of tomatoes now. And you can do it on the grill on in the oven. You’ll just wanna make sure that either is preheated to 400 degrees. We like to use our grill because in the summer, we hate to heat up our house more. Once you put ’em in the grill or in the oven, go ahead and roast the for 45 minutes. While your tomatoes are roasting, you’re gonna go ahead and chop two cups of onions and six cloves of garlic into a fine dice. Then you’re gonna melt two tablespoons of butter and two more tablespoons of olive oil. Put those right in your soup pot that you’re gonna be using. Add the onion and the garlic to the soup pot. So the onions can begin to caramelize and also add a quarter teaspoon of red pepper flakes. You can always add a little more if you like things a little hotter or less, if you’re like my father-in-law who doesn’t like hot things at all. So it’s gonna take a few minutes for the onions and garlic to brown. Maybe about 10 minutes, so don’t panic or don’t worry about it. But you wanna be in a nice golden color. Once they’re looking really caramelized, then you’re gonna add just a few more ingredients and then you’re done. So you’ll add a quart of chicken stock and it can be salted or unsalted. I prefer unsalted so I can add my seasonings or adjust my seasonings later. You’ll add a teaspoon of fresh thyme. You’ll add one 28 ounce can of plumb tomatoes. I like to use the San Marzano tomatoes. Then we’ll add, and this is the kicker, four cups of packed basil. And this is where growing your own basil really helps. Because I can’t imagine what it would cost to go buy four cups of basil in the grocery store. So I like to go out to our garden, or better yet, have my husband go out to our garden, pick four cups of basil, and add them to the pot. Let it wilt down and as soon as it wilts down, you’re gonna add those beautiful tomatoes you took off the grill. Once you have all the ingredients in the pot, bring it to a boil. Then reduce the heat and let it simmer for 40 minutes, uncovered. While it’s simmering, you really don’t need to do anything to it. You can stir it a couple of times, if you’d like. But it’s gonna reduce down, not substantially but a little bit. More often than not though, your family members are gonna be coming by the kitchen to see what smells so good. So the last step before enjoying this wonderful soup is to blend it. And you can do this in a variety of ways. You can use a blender. You can use a food mill or if you’re like me, you can use an immersion hand blender. Anytime I get to use my hand blender makes me happy. And again, the beauty of this is you can do this however you like it. You can leave it chunky or you can puree it finer. We tend to like it a little on the fine side. The flavor is just the same, regardless. And that’s what really matters. The tomatoes and basil are front and center in our version of roasted tomato basil soup. And I hope your family enjoys it as much as ours does. And if you wanna enter a soup competition, best of luck to you.