Tomato Basil Soup

Delicious!

Tonight for dinner we made one of my favorites! And let me say first, I do not enjoy soup when it is hot, but we make this with grilled cheese sandwiches and I will eat anything if I get to eat a grilled cheese along with it. Luckily I love this soup so it works out great. It is a really easy recipe!

 

Pictured above are all the ingredients you will need. We did 1 and half recipes because we wanted left overs for lunch tomorrow. You will want to use 6 tomatoes (peeled, seeded, and diced; we use on the vine tomatoes), a bunch a fresh basil, a small yellow onion, 2 tbsp olive oil, 8 oz tomato sauce, 1 garlic clove, 1 tsp sugar, and salt and pepper to taste.

Directions:

1. Boil water in a 3 quart saucepan.

 

2. Once boiling, cut an x on the bottom of each tomato, pictured above, this will help the skins peel off once they are blanched. Place tomatoes in the boiling water for just 1 to 2 until the skin starts to separate from the tomato, pictured below.

 

3. While the tomatoes are boiling, in a big bowl place ice and fill with water.
4. When the tomatoes come out of the boiling water place in the ice water bowl. Let them sit for about 1 to 2 minutes before pulling out. You will want the skin to be really pulling away from the tomato, pictured below. It will make your life much easier.

*5. Place tomatoes to the side; dice small onion, slice basil leaves, and chop garlic. We love our garlic car, if you do not have one, I would recommend you get one (we got ours as a gift, but they can be found basically anywhere that sells kitchen utensils). They make dicing garlic so easy. You just place the peeled garlic clove in the car and drive it along your counter. Then you open and pour out when completed. Here is a picture of the garlic car.

6. Drain the water and using the same saucepan, heat 2 tbsp of olive oil. Cook onion and garlic in oil for about 10 minutes stirring occasionally until the onions are tender, but not browned.
**7. While the onions and garlic are cooking, peel, seed, and dice tomatoes. The skins should come off easily and I would recommend cutting the tomato in half and using your fingers to seed the tomatoes. Dice into small pieces.
8. Once the onions and garlic are tender add your diced tomatoes. Stir and let cook for about 10 minutes. Below is what this step looks like once it has been added.

9. Stir in remaining ingredients (8 oz tomato sauce, 1/2 tsp sugar, shredded basil, and salt and pepper to taste) and let cook for 10 minutes.
10. During this last step is when we make our grilled cheese. We like to use the bottom part of our panini maker, but make yours how you like.

11. Enjoy your yummy soup and grilled cheese!

*I like to do all the prep dicing prior to starting to cook the soup, I find it easier to cook that way
**If you want to skip the fresh tomatoes we have used 3 cans (14.5 oz) petite diced tomatoes, undrained, if you do this omit the salt and add 1 tsp sugar instead
**Also, the peeling, seeding, and dicing takes more than 10 minutes so if you are cooking with someone else this is a good step to work together on