Serves 5 

Ingredients

• 2 x 400g tins tomatoes
• 1-2 cloves of garlic
• 1 red onion
• 700ml stock of your choice
• 2 TBSP cream (optional)

Preparation Time – 10 mins                                       

Cooking Time – 25 mins

 

This is my favourite recipe to use for homemade tomato soup, it’s just so easy…….. and so cheap to make it literally has 4 ingredients (5 if you add cream) and who doesn’t love cheap? All you need is 2 x 400g tins of tomatoes (chopped or plum it really doesn’t matter because we are going to blend them), 1-2 cloves of garlic, 1 red onion and 700ml of stock (i use chicken stock) and cream if you are using it but it is still good without.

Now tomato soup is probably my most favourite soup, there is just nothing better in winter than curling up with a bowl or mug of hot tomato soup and a book – my second favourite thing to do is read… I am obsessed with books, if I’m not cooking, working or sleeping  am usually curled up somewhere in sweats reading a book- Now back to tomatoes, I don’t actually eat tomatoes raw in salads and things like that because i hate the texture of them but I love the taste of them in cooking, i also love to add grated cheese to my bowl of tomato soup but let’s be honest cheese makes everything better, so cheese and homemade bread with tomato soup is like heaven.

For Christmas a couple of years ago my mum got me a Morphy Richards soup maker. It makes soup making so much easier and quicker and it saves on the clean-up because it cooks and blends the soup in one so I don’t have to wash pans and a blender and I do not have a dishwasher so keeping dishes to a minimum is great. If you do not have a soup maker a good old fashioned pan and blender works just fine.

The other reason i love my soup maker is because it has multiple settings. It has a setting for smooth soup which cooks and blends, a setting for chunky soup which just cooks, one for juices and one which just blends so you can choose the consistency you want.

These are the ingredients you will need for your soup. I am not fancy when it comes to the canned tomatoes that i buy, they are all the same and i mean the same. I have compared cheap store brand tinned tomato ingredients against more expensive brands and they are literally the same.

Chop your onion and crush your garlic and add to the soup maker or pan along with the tomatoes.

Add 700ml of stock. I use chicken for this but have also used vegetable and beef and they all work great so it really is up to you whichever you would prefer to use. Give your ingredients a quick stir.

Now it’s time to cook so if you are using a soup maker, select the smooth mode and if not then bring all of your ingredients to a boil in a pan and then simmer for around 25 mins or until the mixture seems a thick enough consistency and your onions are soft. When it’s done, blend until it is to your desired consistency.

Add 2 TBSP of cream to the soup and stir. Add to a bowl with some homemade bread and serve.

 

** If you are freezing portions of this do not add the cream before freezing as it may separate when defrosted. It is better to add cream to each portion as you serve it.