Homemade Tomato Soup – Super Easy & Delicious!

I grew up on Campbell’s Tomato Soup. It was the meal of the sick and infirm in my house. Caught a cold? Here’s some Campbell’s Tomato Soup. Get your finger slammed in the car door? Have a bowl of piping hot canned soup. Got dumped? Here’s some soup – heat it up in the microwave.

Nothing beats tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich. To this day, that meal reminds me of eating in bed while watching game shows on the portable black and white TV my dad wheeled into my room before leaving for work. Even if I wasn’t really sick, and just wanted to miss the math quiz happening that day, the soup and sandwich felt like a warm hug.

Homemade Tomato Soup

I love tomato soup, but never once tried to make it from scratch. That all changed when I grew a bumper crop of tomatoes and ran out of things to do with them. Wish I’d tried sooner because homemade tomato soup is absolutely delicious, and it is so easy to make. Not quite as easy as opening a can, but so much more satisfying.

Every year I plant a garden filled with vegetables, and each year I am surprised by what took off and what didn’t work. This year I had gobs and gobs of tomatoes. Even as the dogs ate them off the vine, I still had too many. Cucumbers – which were a bumper crop last year – produced 6 medium sized cukes that were filled with seeds. Of course I have green beans even though I haven’t planted green beans in 4 years. I got one zucchini from three plants, go figure.

Anyway, back to tomato soup.

This homemade tomato soup recipe is so easy you can create it from scratch any night of the week.

Prepare the tomatoes

If you’re using tomatoes from the garden or farmer’s market (if they are in season there’s no reason not to use fresh tomatoes, if it’s winter canned tomatoes work well too), you’ll need to blanch the tomatoes so you can easily peel, core and remove the seeds. If you’d rather not go to this kind of trouble canned tomatoes will produce a tasty soup, but throw in a little sugar to get rid of the tinny taste from the can.

The great thing about this recipe is that you can make as much or as little as you like. I used 6 large beefsteak tomatoes and about 6 Roma tomatoes because that’s what I had. The Roma tomatoes are much easier to peel and core, but in my opinion they taste about the same. If you don’t have fresh tomatoes use a large can of whole or crushed tomatoes.

Bringing it Together

In a large pot melt half a stick of butter and add one chopped onion sauté for about 3 minutes until onions become fragrant. Add the tomatoes and their juice and a teaspoon of salt (use less or more to taste) and 2 cups water, vegetable or chicken broth (I use chicken broth). Bring to a simmer and cook for about half an hour and stir occasionally.

Blend, Blend, Blend

Remove from heat and blend using an immersion blender. I use a Cuisinart stick blender, but you can also use a regular blender. The immersion blender is so convenient and it blends soups so easily with no transferring from pot to blender to pot again. Blend until it reaches the desired consistency. If you like a thicker soup use less water or broth, use more for thinner soup.

Store in the fridge for up to a week or fill ziploc bags with soup and freeze for later.