Tomato Soup

Prep Time: 0:15

Cook Time: 0:15

Serves: 4

Ingredients / Shopping List

500g tomatoes

500ml stock

25g oil

100g onion

400g can chopped tomatoes

1 clove garlic

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp balsamic vinegar

Sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Prep to Cook: Large deep sided pan, mixing bowl, can opener, vegetable knife, chopping board, teaspoon, long handled spoon, measuring jug, handheld stick blender or liquidizer

Prep: Peel and chop the onion finely

Prepare the stock using boiling water and a stock cube (vegetable or chicken)

Gently fry off the diced onion in a little oil until they soften but do NOT brown.

Re-boil the kettle and pour freshly boiled water over the tomatoes in a mixing bowl

Leave for about 30 seconds

Use a fork, remove tomatoes one at a time and peel off their skins. Throw skins away.

Slice, then dice the tomatoes and add to the cooking pan.

Add the tin of chopped tomatoes, the paprika, seasoning, sugar and vinegar

Bring to the boil and stir to prevent any sticking on the base of the pan.

Add a little extra boiling water if the mixture appears to be too thick.

After 15 minutes simmer remove from the heat and cool

Blend with a handheld stick blender in the pan, or use a food processor.

Serve with cream and croutons or breadsticks.

Check it out!

Puree soup can be an excellent way to use seasonal produce. During late September in the UK tomatoes are ripening and plentiful. If you are buying the tomatoes look for reduced pack or good value tomatoes. Soup is a good way to eat vegetables to get your 5-a-day.

Recipe Science

Cooks Know How: Soup is a pleasure to cook because it is all about maximising flavour and colour. Puree soup is perhaps the easiest and quite magical when the blender smoothes all the ingredients together. The process is vegetable preparation, simmering on the hob and finally blending the mixture. A handheld stick blender is a useful piece of equipment to use when soup making because you can use it in the soup pan rather than transferring hot liquid to a processor or liquidizer.

Stock, flavoured watery juice, can be made from boiling meat bones with aromatic vegetable mirepoix (celery, carrots and onions), or simply by using stock cubes or granules. If vegetable stock is used, it makes this soup suitable for vegetarians to eat.

The tomatoes are skinned because the skin remains bitty even after blending. If you do decide to leave the skins on the end soup would be best sieved.