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Anyone have any of the last heirloom tomatoes of the season sitting on the vine (or fridge) just begging to be used up?? How about making them into this Garden Heirloom Tomato Soup?!
This soup highlights all of the late summer flavors of perfectly meaty and flavorful tomatoes straight from the vine. And it is also unexpectedly vegan… healthy to boot!
The trick to creating a creamy cream-less soup is to blend olive oil into the tomato puree to make a creamy emulsification. I got the technique for this recipe from Kenji Lopez-Alt over at Serious Eats. And confession: while I do appreciate heavy cream, sometimes I find it a bit much in tomato soup. It can be overly heavy and sometimes detracts from the main event: those delicious tomatoes.
Ready to try? Let’s get going!
Step 1 
Step 2 
Step 3
How to make
- Step 1: toss the tomatoes, onion, and garlic into a pot over medium heat.
- Step 2: when the vegetables are all cooked down and mushy, add some bread. The bread basically works to give the soup a bit of extra body. Seems a bit weird, but it works- promise!
- Step 3: Blend your soup! Drizzle in the olive oil as your soup is blending on high speed to emulsify.
I mean really… how easy it that? I think this whole soup cooks in about 15-20 minutes. It’s just so dang fast and so dang good. And isn’t that color just gorgeous?
If anyone’s interested – I think I used 100% Brandywine Red tomatoes for this recipe because that’s what we had on hand. Another tomato variety we love is the Cherokee Purple, which I think would also work wonderfully. But really, guys, just use whatever is fresh and is on hand.
Tomatoes on the Brain?
Here are some of my other absolute favorite tomato recipes to finish out the season!
- Fresh Tomato Tarts with Boursin
- Sundried Tomato Angel Hair Pasta with Mozzarella
- Mozzarella, Tomato, and Red Pepper Bruschetta
- Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato Salad
Happy Cooking!
Garden Heirloom Tomato Soup
Ingredients
- 3.5 lbs Ripe Heirloom Tomatoes cored, and roughly chopped
- 1 small White or Spanish Onion thinly sliced
- 3 cloves garlic smashed and peeled
- 1 tsp Ground Cayenne Pepper (or to taste)
- 3-4 tsp Kosher Salt (or to taste)
- Black Pepper to taste
- 3 slices White Sandwich Bread crusts removed, and roughly torn
- 1/2 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil divided + a few tablespoons for cooking the vegetables
Instructions
- Drizzle approximately 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a stock pot or dutch oven. Turn heat to medium high.
- Add onions, smashed garlic, and chopped tomatoes. Season with about 2 teaspoons of kosher salt, cayenne (use less if nervous, but 1 tsp for me wasn't too hot), and black pepper, to taste. Cook until tomatoes start to release juices and begin to boil. Then cover and reduce heat. Simmer for about 15 minutes, or until onions and garlic are translucent and tomatoes are very mushy.
- Add bread pieces and stir, letting them soak up the tomato juices.
- Ladle about 1/2 of the tomato mixture to the blender. Place the lid on the blender and using a towel (preferably one you don't care too much about in the event of some splatter), cover the lid. Blend starting on low and gradually increase speed to high. At this point you can remove the vent for the blender without much risk of spatter. Slowly drizzle in 1/4 of olive oil. Mixture should emulsify and change color to a bright orange-red. Pour emulsified soup out into a separate pan or bowl.
- Repeat the blender/olive oil emulsion step for the remaining soup.
- Finally, pour all the soup back together. Taste and add 1-2 additional teaspoons of salt as needed as well as more pepper, if desired.
- Garnish with diced fresh tomato, chives, and additional black pepper as desired.
This looks deliciously rich in flavour, definitely will warm me up
Thanks so much Raymund! I love this recipe so much 🙂