Roasted tomato soup: sweet, smoky, with butter croutons
Not the Polish tomato soup made on chicken stock, but something else: ripe August tomatoes roasted in halves with onion and garlic until the edges char and the juices caramelise, blended with stock and sieved. Roasting drives off water and concentrates a sweetness that boiling in a pot never gives. Four bowls of velvety soup from a kilo and a half of tomatoes that cost pennies in August.
Your own work in that: 25 min.
- Onto the tray 10 min
- Roasting 40 min
- Blending and croutons 15 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneLay out the tray
Heat the oven to 200 °C. Halve the tomatoes and cut out the stalks. Peel the onions and cut into quarters, leave the garlic in its skins. Lay everything on a large lined tray, tomatoes cut side up, in a single layer. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, sugar and oregano.
Ingredients: 1500 g tomatoes · 2 pcs onions · 6 cloves garlic · 4 tbsp olive oil · 1 tsp salt · 1 tsp sugar · 1 tsp dried oregano
TipOne layer, not a heap: crowded tomatoes steam instead of roasting and the soup turns watery. If they don't fit on one tray, use two.
One layer, cut side up, oil and saltRoast until the edges char
Roast 40 minutes, until the tomatoes collapse, the skins wrinkle, and the edges and the onion char slightly. The juice on the tray should be dark and sticky: that caramel is what sets this soup apart from boiled tomato soup.
TipCharred spots are not a mistake but flavour. Ordinary tomato soup boils tomatoes in water and dilutes them; here the water evaporates and the sugars caramelise.
Collapsed, wrinkled, dark edgesBlend
Squeeze the garlic out of its skins. Put the tomatoes, onion, garlic and all the tray juices into a pot, add the hot stock and blend smooth with a stick blender, 2 minutes.
Ingredients: 500 ml vegetable stock · 100 ml whipping cream (30%) · ½ tsp black pepper
Everything from the tray, stock, blenderSieve
Push the soup through a sieve into a clean pot with the back of a ladle; the skins and seeds stay behind. This step turns a good soup into velvet. Bring to the boil, season with pepper and, if needed, salt; if too thick, add stock, if too sharp, a pinch more sugar. Stir in the cream at the end (if using), keeping back a few spoonfuls for serving.
Through a sieve, with a ladle, skins stayFry the croutons
Cut the bread into 1.5 cm cubes and fry in the butter over medium heat 4 minutes, stirring, until golden and crisp.
Ingredients: 2 pcs bread or roll · 30 g butter · ¼ bunch flat-leaf parsley
Cubes in butter, until goldenServe
Into bowls, a swirl of cream, croutons and parsley or basil leaves. Keeps 3 days in the fridge and freezes perfectly without the cream: freeze a portion of August for November.
Cream, croutons, greens
Before you start
With peppers
Two red peppers in quarters roasted with the tomatoes: a sweeter, thicker soup the colour of brick.
Spicy
A chilli on the tray and a teaspoon of smoked paprika in the stock: smoky and hot, also good as a pasta sauce.
Winter version
Tinned tomatoes will not give the same result — in winter, make a classic tomato soup instead. This recipe makes sense when ripe outdoor tomatoes are around, from July to September.
