Our “Big Beef” tomato plants aren’t producing large tomatoes anymore, just a few golf-ball sized orbs. The plants are looking a bit ragged yet we are still collecting a few tomatoes here and there and they’re so much better than any supermarket tomatoes (in our area, that is). I had 4 pounds of ripe tomatoes and the freezer was already well stocked with fresh tomato sauce and homemade pizza sauce and there was no way I was going to oven dry tomatoes for 6 hours in this heat! So soup it was going to be. I adapted this recipe from David Lebovitz who adapted his recipe from The Bonne Femme Cookbook.
Thyme is a perfect match for the roasted tomatoes. Martha Stewart uses marjoram which would certainly work just as well in this soup.
Roasting the tomatoes helps to intensify their natural sweetness and imparts a more delicate flavor to the garlic and onions.
Summer Roasted Tomato Soup
Makes 2 quarts
Adapted from David Lebovitz blog
Ingredients
4 pounds ripe tomatoes
1/2 large onion, sliced
6 – 10 cloves garlic, peeled
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 1/2 cups liquid (I used half water and half chicken broth)
2 1/2 teaspoons minced thyme
1 tablespoon sugar
Preparation
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
Core the stem portion of the tomatoes. Cut the tomatoes in half horizontally and squeeze out the seeds. Toss the tomatoes with the olive oil and garlic on a rimmed baking sheet and season generously with salt and pepper. Rub a little oil on the onion slices. Turn the tomatoes so they are all cut side down and lay onion slices between the tomatoes and garlic. Bake for 20 – 30 minutes, until the tomatoes are completely soft and beginning to char on the bottoms. Slip off the tomato skins before proceeding to the next step.
Warm the water and stock in a large saucepan with the tomatoes, garlic, onions and any juices left in the pan. Add the thyme. Once warm, simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool. Blend the tomato mixture with the sugar (My blender could not accommodate the entire recipe so I did this in two batches).
I noticed that blenderizing the tomato mixture meant aerating the ingredients which gave the soup a very light orange color. If you slowly reheat the soup, the color changes into a vibrant and gorgeous color. This turned out to be a wonderful soup and I will be adding it to my collection of recipes.
***For vegetarian tomato soup replace the chicken broth with water.