This morning, we woke up to this gorgeousness outside.
What better time to get in the kitchen and make something comforting and delicious? And, above all, healthy.
I, like many of you, am starting the year with clean eating. This is the cleanest tomato soup I've ever made, and it somehow tastes like there's a 1/2 cup of heavy cream in it. TRULY delicious.
You can make it the "regular" way, or you can make it the Whole 30 compliant way. For W30 compliance, look for the asterisk in the ingredients list.
Ingredients:
2 Tbs extra-virgin olive oil
1 Tbs butter (*clarified)
1 large garlic clove, smashed and peeled
2 Tbs all-purpose flour (*coconut flour)
3 cups of chicken or beef stock (*homemade stock)
28-oz. can whole peeled plum tomatoes (*peeled tomatoes - save the juice!)
1-1/2 tsp sugar (*omit)
1 spring fresh thyme
Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper
Disclaimer: I am not a food photographer, nor do I think I'm Ina Garten (at least not without some wine). Bear with me.
1. In a small bowl, purée the tomatoes and save the juice. I recommend using a stick blender (pictured above) if you have one - best tool for this kind of thing, and saves you dirtying up your blender.
2. In a nonreactive 5-6 qt. Dutch oven, heat the oil and butter over low heat until it melts together. Add garlic and cook over low heat, stirring until garlic is soft, but not browned - about 6 minutes..
I heated the garlic too quickly and it burned at bit, as you'll see in subsequent photos. Oops!
3. Add the flour and stir to coat the garlic.
Warning! Don't let your garlic get this brown. :)
3. Add the broth, tomatoes with juice, sugar, thyme, and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat, stirring to prevent the flour from sticking to the pan.
Looking good, right?
4. Cover the soup, reduce the heat to low, and let it simmer (stirring occasionally) for 40 minutes. Chef's note: At Chez Scott, we never wait 40 minutes because we (I) are (am) always ravenous, so even without that step, this soup is ri-donk-ulous.
5. Serve by itself, adorned with sour cream, or alongside your favorite grilled cheese. Freezes beautifully, as they say, and even better on the second day.
I feel like many of us female cooks judge the success of a recipe by how much their husbands like it. If that's our measuring stick, we'll give this one two thumbs way up. It was so easy, so yummy, and is absolutely one of the healthiest tomato soups I've ever had.
Perfect for a snowy mid-week meal.