Smooth tomato soup with cream
A store-cupboard soup dressed up with cream
Doubles easily in a slightly larger pan. Freeze it in single portions before the cream goes in, for up to three months, then stir the cream in as you reheat.
Tomato soup is one of the few things everyone agrees on, and the whole trick lies in what you leave out. Passata does the job whole tomatoes would, without a scrap of skin or a single seed to catch on anything. Garlic goes in first, cooked in butter until it disappears entirely into a soft, sweet purée rather than staying in visible pieces. A spoon of sugar rounds off the sharpness the tomato brings, and cream stirred in at the end turns the colour from red to a warm, glowing orange. Nothing green floats on top of this one. Blend it fully and it pours thick enough to hold the swirl of cream you draw across the surface.
Ingredients
Contains: Milk, Celery
- 20 gunsalted butter
- 2 clovegarlic, peeled and finely chopped
- 500 gpassata
- 400 mlclear vegetable stock, strained clear, or a good stock cube
- 1 tspsugar
- 100 mldouble cream, plus a little extra to swirl on top
- salt
Method
Melt the butter in a medium pan over a low heat. Add the garlic and cook gently, stirring, for 2 to 3 minutes, until it has softened and turned pale gold with no raw bite left, taking care it does not catch or brown.
Pour in the passata and the stock, stir to combine, and bring to a gentle simmer. Stir in the sugar.
Simmer uncovered for 12 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the garlic is completely soft and the soup has reduced slightly and deepened in colour.
Blend until completely smooth, using a stick blender in the pan or in batches in a jug blender, so no piece of garlic survives. Fill a jug blender no more than half full with hot soup and hold the lid down under a folded cloth.
Stir in most of the cream and warm the soup through gently without letting it boil. Taste for salt.
Ladle into warm bowls and swirl the reserved cream across the top of each.
Watch-points
- Use a clear stock, strained if home-made, with no vegetable pieces in it.
- Cook the garlic gently until it has completely softened, with no raw or crisp piece left in the bowl.
- Use passata rather than whole or chopped tomatoes, so there is no skin or seed anywhere in the soup.
- Leave out basil or any other fresh herb leaf. This soup carries its own flavour without one.
Make it more nourishing
- Stir in an extra 30 g of butter off the heat right before serving.
- Use 150 ml of double cream instead of 100 ml for a rounder, richer bowl.
- Whisk a tablespoon of skimmed milk powder into the stock before it goes in. You will not taste it.
Swaps
- Instead of double cream, use crème fraîche
- a slightly sharper finish, stirred in off the heat so it does not split
- Instead of vegetable stock, use chicken stock
- not vegetarian any more, but a rounder flavour