Homemade tomato soup seems to capture all the seasons at once: summery tomatoes blended with fall root vegetables into a warming bowl for a chilly winter or spring day. I freeze many of my homegrown tomatoes just to make soup. My favorite method is 30-Minute Tomato Soup, with fewer than 10 ingredients and adaptable to fresh, frozen or canned tomatoes. But if you’re used to store-bought soups, even 30 minutes might seem too long. So I created a version that uses an easy shortcut: tomato juice.
If you want a handy pantry recipe, keep a jug of store-bought tomato juice on your shelves. Because I grow so many tomatoes, I freeze their juice in 3-cup portions – ideally captured from tomatoes I’ve grilled in the same way I would for Grilled Tomato Bloody Mary Mix. The grilled juice adds a smokiness and caramelized richness that enhances the soup’s roasted garlic and curry powder.
If my homemade juice comes out thinner than the contents of a store-bought bottle, I replace up to 2/3 cup of juice with grilled tomato solids or chopped fresh tomatoes and puree the soup with an immersion blender before serving. This time of year, I use late-season green tomatoes that I wrapped individually in paper and ripened in boxes indoors. They don’t take on their full summer sweetness but cook up beautifully.
If you prefer a creamy tomato soup, add 1-1/2 cups of cold milk to the finished soup, which brings it to about four servings. To keep the milk from curdling, temper it: Slowly pour hot soup into the cold milk, stirring constantly, and slowly raise the milk’s temperature. Then, pour the creamed soup back into the saucepan, heat it to just below a boil and serve.
Quick Tomato Juice Soup
Serves 2-3
3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons finely chopped onion
3 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour
1-1/2 teaspoons sugar
Sea salt to taste
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 cloves roasted garlic, minced
Pinch of crumbled dried oregano
1 teaspoon curry powder
3 cups tomato juice
In a large, heavy-bottom saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Add the onion and sauté for about 10 minutes, until soft and translucent. Stir in the flour, letting it cook for about 30 seconds like a roux, and then stir in the sugar, salt, pepper, garlic, oregano and curry powder. Slowly stir in the tomato juice. Increase the heat to bring the soup just to a boil, and then taste, adjusting the seasonings as needed, and serve.
Julie Laing is a Bigfork-based cookbook author and food blogger at TwiceAsTasty.com.