Creamy Tomato Soup

Prep 10 min · Cook 25 min · Total 35 min · 4 servings

Built for a grilled cheese to go through it. The two details that make tinned tomatoes taste like a restaurant soup: a pinch of sugar against the acidity, and blending while it is properly hot. Scale it, shop it, and double it for the freezer — this one freezes beautifully, cream and all.

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Ingredients

• 2 tbsp — olive oil
• 1 — onion, finely chopped
• 3 cloves — garlic, minced
• 800 g — canned chopped tomatoes (2 tins)
• 300 ml — vegetable stock
• 1 tsp — caster sugar
• 1 tsp — fine sea salt
• 0.5 tsp — black pepper
• 100 ml — double cream
• 10 g — basil leaves

Instructions

1. Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat and cook the onion with a pinch of the salt for 6–7 minutes until soft and sweet, without browning.
2. Add the garlic for 30 seconds.
3. Add the tomatoes, stock, sugar, remaining salt and the pepper. Simmer gently for 20 minutes, stirring now and then — this cooks the raw edge off the tomatoes.
4. Blend until completely smooth (a stick blender in the pot is fine). For the silkiest result, blend a full 90 seconds, longer than feels necessary.
5. Stir in the cream and warm through for 2 minutes without boiling.
6. Taste — it may want another pinch of sugar or salt — then serve with the basil torn over and something grilled and cheesy alongside.

Substitutions

• Dairy-free? Coconut cream keeps it rich; oat cream keeps the flavour cleanest. Add either off the boil, exactly like the cream.
• Roasted red pepper version? Add a jar of roasted red peppers (drained) with the tomatoes — it becomes the other classic soup with no extra work.
• No blender? Use passata instead of chopped tomatoes and simmer 5 minutes longer; the texture is rustic rather than silky, still good.
• More depth? A teaspoon of smoked paprika and a pinch of chilli flakes with the garlic takes it toward a Spanish profile; a parmesan rind simmered in the pot works too — fish it out before blending.

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