Tomato Soup - Healthy & Easy

Recipe: Tomato Soup Recipe »

This creamy tomato soup tastes just like classic Campbell's - but better. Ultra smooth, lightly sweet and comforting it can be made with passata or fresh tomatoes. Perfect with grilled cheese sandwiches.

About This Tomato Soup

This is my favourite tomato soup recipe - EVER. I wanted to make a soup that tasted like the Campbell's tomato soup but better. I have lots of memories tied up in tinned soups - as kids we loved cream of chicken and tomato soups because they were so different from what we usually ate. It was also easy for us to heat them up and cook them ourselves because we used to beg our mother to let us cook sometimes (even if cooking was just reheating tinned soup, we were kids ;) ). I'm also going to share my secret for getting your tomato soup to be less tangy and more smooth.

What are the ingredients in a tomato soup? Tomatoes! Either fresh or pureed like in a passata with onion, celery, stock and tomato paste. So if you're in tomato season like we are at the moment you can use fresh tomatoes or if you're in the depths of winter you can easily use passata.

The key to getting a Campbell's tomato soup (but better!):

1 Blend the soup very well (a blender or Thermomix rather than an immersion blender is best to get the ultra smooth texture we are looking for).

2 Strain the soup to get that super smooth texture. This is optional for passata but necessary if you are using fresh tomatoes as the blender or Thermomix never quite gets the tomato seeds pulverised enough.

3 My secret to removing the tangyness in the tomatoes (commercial or restaurant tomato soups are not tangy, they're smooth) is to add bicarb! This is a chef tip - see tips below.

Video How To Make Tomato Soup

Ingredients For Tomato Soup

Butter - Use salted or unsalted butter. This is quite a lot of butter for the onions but it gives it a better flavour. Can sub with a vegan butter to make vegan.

Onion - Use white, brown or red onion.

Tomatoes - Use a jar of passata or fresh tomatoes. Fresh tomatoes are less acidic than passata, most which contains citric acid. Check labels if you want a passata without citric acid (Mutti and Leggo's don't use citric acid).

Celery - One rib of fresh celery for flavour.

Chicken stock - You can use a regular stock or a salt reduced one but we do need to salt the soup at the end. Can sub with vegetable stock to make vegan.

Tomato paste - To give it an intense tomato flavour.

Bicarb - Bicarbonate of soda is a key ingredient to reduce the acidity of the tomatoes, especially if using passata. See tip below.

Sugar - Plain white sugar to sweeten and bring out the flavour of tomatoes.

Salt - Tomatoes always need salt to bring out their natural umami flavour.

Cream - Pure or thickened cream gives it a lighter colour and a lightly creamy mouthfeel. If you like adding milk to your tinned tomato soup you'll enjoy it with cream. Can sub cream for evaporated milk too (increase quantity to 50ml/1.7flozs evap milk)

Tips For Making Tomato Soup

1 - Campbell's soup doesn't have much acidity to it at all. It is smooth and sweet. We take the acidity out of the tomatoes with bi-carb. Remember this chef trick from The Bear's pasta sauce? The acid in bicarb neutralises acidity and also helps to cook the tomatoes down. If your passata contains citric acid (and most do), you want to counteract this using bicarb.

2 - You can also use fresh tomatoes instead of passata for this. Fresh tomatoes give the soup a lighter more orange-red colour than passata. To use fresh tomatoes, cut an "X" at the base of each tomato and blanch in simmering water for 1-2 minutes or until the "X" starts to open up (the time depends on how ripe the tomatoes are). Plunge into a bowl of ice water and peel and then crush with hands or roughly chop.

3 - Straining gives the soup a smooth texture, more like a tinned tomato soup. It's optional but sometimes I feel like that smooth texture especially when combined with a grilled cheese sandwich. The ultimate easy comfort dinner!

Other delicious tomato soup recipes to try next are this tomato soup with crispy meatball croutons or this chorizo and tomato soup!

Tomato Soup Recipe

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Recipe Overview

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 25 minutes

Makes: approx 1 litre/1.05 quarts tomato soup

Ingredients Needed

• 2 tablespoons/30g/1oz butter
• 1 onion (110g/3.9ozs) finely chopped
• 680g/24ozs passata or 6 tomatoes
• 1 small stalk (40g/1.4oz) celery, chopped
• 1 cup/250ml/8.8flozs chicken stock
• 160g/5.6ozs tomato paste
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarb
• 1-2 teaspoons sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons cream

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1 FRESH TOMATOES - Skip this step if you are using passata. Cut an X into the base of the tomato and have a bowl of ice water ready. Submerge in a pot of rapidly simmering water for 1 minute or until the X starts to deepen. Remove with tongs and plunge in ice water for 2 minutes. Peel skin and crush with hands, removing calyx.

Step 2 SAUTE - Heat a cast iron pot on low-medium heat. Add butter and saute onion and celery for 8-10 minutes or until the onion is soft and translucent. Stir in the passata or crushed tomatoes, stock, tomato paste and bi-carb. It will start to bubble as it heats but the bubbles will dissipate.

Step 3 SIMMER - Bring soup to a simmer for 10 minutes (15 minutes for fresh tomatoes). Add sugar to taste - start with 1 teaspoon and then add another to taste. Add salt and cream and stir.

Step 4 PUREE - Puree the soup in a blender or a Thermomix (45 seconds, speed #9 or 60 seconds if using fresh tomatoes). If using fresh tomatoes pass through a sieve in 2-3 lots pressing the mixture to get as much out of it as possible. Serve with freshly cracked pepper and a drizzle of oil with a grilled cheese sandwich.

THERMOMIX DIRECTIONS

Step 1 SAUTE - Place the onions and celery in the TM bowl and set to 15 seconds, speed #5. Scrape down halfway if needed. Add butter and set to 10 minutes, 100C, speed 0.5.

Step 2 SIMMER - Add the passata or crushed tomatoes, stock, tomato paste and bicarb. Set to 10 minutes (15 mins for fresh tomatoes), 100C, speed #1.5 and remove MC. Add cream, then sugar to taste and season with salt. Then set to puree 1 minute, speed #8. If using fresh tomatoes, pass through a sieve.

Personal Note

The impetus for this recipe was a bounty of tomatoes I received unexpectedly (ironically I make this more often with passata which I prefer as it is a bit quicker to make). We get our groceries delivered every week from the supermarket. It's something we started doing during COVID that we just continued doing as it's a huge time saver. I actually don't mind going to the supermarket and seeing what's on the shelves but that takes a lot of time.

It's not a foolproof thing though. Sometimes one egg in a dozen is cracked or you might get a teeny tiny cauliflower. There was also a time when I used to get tinned beans and tomatoes with huge dents in them that I seriously wondered about the pickers and if they were ok because the dents were so obvious.

But last week, instead of getting 7 tomatoes as I had asked for, I got a bag of 27 tomatoes! The bag had a couple of other things that we had ordered so I think it was meant for us. I think the picker misread our order! So I made many batches of tomato soup along with other tomato dishes like this famous Humbug tomato salad and crustless quiche!

And then today when our groceries arrived, we received two bottles of mouthwash!

So tell me Dear Reader, have you ever received bonus items with your deliveries? And have you ever tried the bicarb trick with tomatoes?