If you’re looking to impress someone this week, consider making them a meal, and there’s really no easier place to start than soup. Soup is really hard to mess up, and there’s a lot of room for artistic liberty. Tomato soup is a classic American comfort food and is dead simple to make for yourself. The longer you cook tomatoes, the better the flavor you’ll collect, especially with aromatics and alliums. Fresh Jersey tomatoes have great flavor, but until the summer months come around, canned tomatoes work just as well. This recipe omits dairy, but ½ cup of heavy cream or half-and-half could be added for some extra creaminess. Making your own vegetable stock can level up this dish and give you something to do with your vegetable peels, leaves, stems, and skins.
I recently acquired an immersion blender, and it went a long way in making my tomato soup nice and smooth. If you don’t have an immersion blender, you can transfer the cooked soup out of the pot into a normal blender, buy pureed or diced canned tomatoes, or simply leave tomato chunks in the soup. Tomato soup is very versatile and can be great as a side dish or main course. They are well complemented by lighter sides like arugula or Caesar salads and richer dishes like grilled cheese, mozzarella sticks, and risotto.
