Tomato Soup

Tomatoes are abundant around this time of the year. My garden is overflowing with tomato plants. This last weekend I harvested about 30 lb. of tomatoes . After sharing with friends and freezing a lot of them , I am still left with a lot of tomatoes. I had a whole lot of golden tomatoes, cherry as well as pear tomatoes. I didn’t want to freeze those and couldn’t possibly eat those many in salad. So the next best thing I could figure out to do with them was make tomato soup. These tomatoes are super rich in the sweet and tangy tomato flavour. The tomato soup turned out a beautiful golden colour and sinfully good!

The soup is pretty easy to make and you can make it with red or golden tomatoes. When the tomato season is over , am going to use my frozen tomatoes to make this super yummy and healthy  tomato soup. I used fried bread croutons to top of the soup, just like mom used to do. This soup is perfect for lunch along with some good  bread and a salad.

This soup is gluten free, super low in fat or even fat free if you do not use cream for garnish and choked full of antioxidants!!! I cooked my tomatoes in pressure cooker for 10 minutes or so. If you don’t have pressure cooker, you can cook tomatoes in an open pot , with a little more water, till the tomatoes turn soft and mushy. Tomato soup is pretty quick and easy to make , with very few ingredients that are easily available in any pantry.

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Tomatoes about 2 lb.

chopped Onion 1 small

garlic 4-6 cloves

dried basil 1 tsp

water 1 cup

1 tbsp. corn starch dissolved in 1/4 cup cold water

1 tbsp. sugar optional

salt and pepper to taste

cream for garnish

Croutons

2 slices of bread, crust removed and cut into small squares

2 tbsp oil for frying the bread

Method

Put roughly chopped tomatoes, onion, garlic, water and basil to the pressure cooker. Add a tsp. of salt.

Put the lid on and bring the cooker to full pressure. Let the tomatoes cook under pressure for about 5 minutes and then take the cooker off the stove.

When all the pressure is gone, open the cooker and let the tomato mix cool down a little. Use the hand blender or a regular blender to blend the tomatoes to a smooth puree.

Run this puree through a sieve to get rid of all the seeds and tomato peel to get a smooth texture.

Check and add salt and pepper to taste at this point. You can add a tablespoon of sugar if you find it too tangy.

Add the cornstarch dissolved in water to the pureed tomatoes and bring it back to a boil and let simmer for a couple minutes.

Serve it piping hot with a little cream and croutons for garnish.

Croutons:

Add 2 tbsp of oil in a nonstick pan. Add squares of bread to the pan. cook till one side is golden, flip and cook the other side till golden. Add on top of the soup just before serving.