Thursday, September 24, 2020

Simple Homemade Tomato Soup

Just carrots, onions, garlic, tomatoes, broth, and bacon are all you need for homemade tomato soup. It’s deliciously rich in flavor and comes together in just under an hour.

Homemade tomato soup in bowls with cheese.

Hey friends! This recipe was originally published in 2015 (!!!), but we could all use a little more homemade tomato soup and grilled cheese in our lives, so we’re sharing it here again. Enjoy!

Hallooooo, fall!

And hallo, soup weather. Right? RIGHT? Although, let’s be honest – I would not be sad if I ended up eating this for 12 out of 12 months of the year. This homemade tomato soup could love me all year long.

I based this recipe off of the cream of tomato soup recipe in The New Classics cookbook by Saveur (affiliate link) and yes I’ve essentially read this cookbook cover to cover. Reading a cookbook like this cover to cover essentially means cooking it cover to cover, which is possibly the best thing that ever did happen to me.

Can I blow your mind for a second? This homemade tomato soup starts with bacon. B-a-c-o-n. Tomato soup // bacon // it just works. These are the delicious ways in which Saveur inspires.

Here’s what else we’re working with:

  • Some fresh veggies and aromatics like carrots, onion, and garlic.
  • Yummy herbs like thyme and bay leaf.
  • Lots of tomato goodness thanks to a delicious can of (HAND-CRUSHED) San Marzano.
  • Cream. Because, of course.

Ohhhmygosh, the smells that will happen. I am having a hard time imagining anything more comforting than being in my kitchen experiencing the simmer-smells of this simple homemade tomato soup in progress.

Check out our video for how to make Homemade Tomato Soup:

Veggies sautéing for tomato soup

What to Serve With This Tomato Soup

I am going to have to ask you —> please make some extremely cheesy Provolone toasts or grilled cheese or grilled sourdough bread or something, because what is tomato soup without the cheesy bread for dunking?

But with that being said, ultimately what is going to warm you to your toes and make you feel like a long nap on the couch is this simple homemade tomato soup. WITH BACON, remember. With bacon.

And if absolutely necessary to round things out a bit, here are a few green things to join the party as well:

Homemade tomato soup in a bowl with bread dipped in.

Alright! Today is your day to make simple homemade tomato soup. I can just feeeeeeel it.

It’s smoky, a little bit sweet, and just as creamy or not-creamy as you want it to be. It’s simple – ready in just under an hour, with MOST of that time being the part where you just gaze lovingly at the pot of simmering tomatoes and let the smells of carrots and onions and garlic and bacon wrap you up in their loveliness.

Cheers to your relaxing, comforting, hug-in-a-bowl tomato soup day!

Tomato soup in bowls with cheese and bread.

Common Questions About This Tomato Soup

Why crush the tomatoes by hand?

The main goal here is to use higher quality tomatoes, and usually whole canned tomatoes are higher quality whereas pre-crushed tomatoes are made from bits and pieces of lower quality tomatoes. That being said, I’ve made this without hand-crushing the tomatoes (either using crushed canned tomatoes, or breaking apart the tomatoes in the pan with a spoon) and it’s still delicious.

How can I make this vegan?

Skip the bacon, use vegetable broth instead of chicken broth, and skip the cream at the end (or throw a handful of cashews into the blender with the soup to make it creamy).

Can this soup be frozen?

Yes! It should keep in the freezer for 3-4 months.

Can this be made in the Instant Pot?

Yes! Follow the recipe as-is using the sauté function on the Instant Pot, and then instead of simmering for 30 minutes, cook it on manual high pressure for 15 minutes with a quick release at the end. Blend, add your cream and serve!

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Simple Homemade Tomato Soup in bowls with spoon.

Simple Homemade Tomato Soup


Description

Simple Homemade Tomato Soup with carrots, onions, garlic, tomatoes, broth, and bacon for deliciously rich flavor. Extremely easy to make!


Ingredients

  • 4 slices bacon, cut into small pieces
  • 2 carrots, chopped
  • half of a yellow onion, chopped
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons tomato paste
  • 1 tablespoon flour
  • 4 cups chicken broth (more to thin out the soup at the end as needed)
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 28-ounce can whole San Marzano tomatoes
  • cream (optional – to add at the end as desired)
  • kosher salt to taste (I like 1-2 teaspoons)

Instructions

  1. Fry the bacon in a large soup pot over medium low heat until bacon starts to get crispy and browned, about 5-8 minutes.
  2. Add the carrots, onion, and garlic to the bacon in the pan; sauté for 5-10 minutes until the vegetables are very aromatic and tender.
  3. Add the tomato paste – stir for a few minutes until you can see/smell the tomato paste starting to brown and caramelize. Add the flour and stir for a minute or so.
  4. Pour the tomatoes and their juice into a bowl and crush them with your hands. Add the crushed tomatoes, broth, thyme, and bay leaf to the soup pot. Simmer for 30 minutes. Puree in batches and return to the pot. Add cream if you want. Season with salt. Look at that homemade tomato soup, you champ.

Notes

The equipment section above contains affiliate links to products we use and love!

  • Category: Dinner
  • Cuisine: American

Keywords: homemade tomato soup, tomato soup recipe, tomato soup with bacon

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Monday, September 21, 2020

Creamy Red Pepper Pasta with Blistered Tomatoes

Creamy red pepper pasta on a plate with tomatoes.
This recipe is sponsored by DeLallo

This (vegan) creamy roasted red pepper pasta is just such a gift.

It wins all categories: creamy, amazing texture; savory, rich taste; shortness of ingredient lists; versatility; ease of preparation; nutritional punch.

IT HAS EVERYTHING.

We’ve done the creamy red pepper sauce thing before, a few times – like here, with cashews and roasted cauliflower, and here, with almond milk and zucchini noodles, and here, with the butter and fettuccine and shrimp. But this version is special because it sees us just as we are in this moment:

  • at the very end of summer with some lingering peak-season produce.
  • wanting to eat well.
  • needing food to be easy.
  • craving straight-up comfort food.

Whenever I share a short-ingredient-list recipe, I always like to emphasize the importance of the quality of ingredients. These few ingredients are the MVPs that are going to carry the weight of all your simplest, most beautiful recipes.

GOOD olive oil, QUALITY pasta, ACTUALLY DELICIOUS jarred roasted red peppers.

Ingredients for creamy red pepper pasta.

You know we love DeLallo and you know right now that I’m going to recommend DeLallo staples for this recipe.

No, scratch that. I’m going to recommend just making a once or twice annual pasta-loving, joy-bringing, pantry-stocking online order of DeLallo products. Picture this: one order, a shipment of authentic Italian pastas and olive oils and vinegars and antipasti-type yummies, delivered to your door so you can pull together quality meals on the fly and don’t have to think about it for the whole season ahead. Yeah? (Here’s the link if you want to just pasta window shop.)

Brand allegiance aside, I can’t say enough good things about this creamy red pepper pasta situation.

It’s full of flavor, it is adored by me (for it’s flavor, texture, and nutrition, and ease of prep), by my husband Bjork (for having a super satisfying creamy sauce), by my toddler (for being fun to eat), and by my sister (for being totally vegan).

Speaking from experience, it has all the makings of a weekly staple recipe that is both feel-good for the body and crave-able for the tastebuds. ♡

Creamy red pepper pasta with tomatoes.

The inspiration for this recipe came after seeing this dreamy picture while perusing In Pursuit of More which is one of my favorite vegan recipe sites!

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Creamy Red Pepper Pasta with Blistered Tomatoes


  • Author: Lindsay
  • Prep Time: 10 minutes
  • Cook Time: 20 minutes
  • Total Time: 35 minutes
  • Yield: 6 generous servings

Description

This Creamy Red Pepper Pasta is seriously delicious and seriously vegan! Perfectly chewy rigatoni, blistered juicy tomatoes, a creamy-but-cream-less roasted red pepper sauce, all sprinkled with fresh chives and basil.


Ingredients

  • 1 lb. rigatoni (DeLallo brand)
  • 2–3 cups cherry tomatoes
  • a quick swish of olive oil (DeLallo brand)
  • salt and pepper

Sauce

  • 1 1/4 cup cashews
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1 1/2 cups water
  • 1 large roasted red pepper (DeLallo brand – not a whole jar, just one, or if you’re using sliced red peppers, about 1/2 cup)
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast (optional)
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • chives and basil for topping

Instructions

  1. Pasta: Cook pasta according to package directions.
  2. Tomatoes: Preheat the broiler. On a baking sheet, toss cherry tomatoes with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Broil for 10-15 minutes until very roasty.
  3. Sauce: Meanwhile, blend up your sauce ingredients in a blender until *very* smooth and creamy. Pour over hot cooked pasta (off heat) and stir to mix – it should cling well to the pasta.
  4. Serve: Serve with tomatoes over the top, as well as herbs and more salt and pepper.

Notes

The sauce thickens when you reheat it, so be prepared to just add more water if you’re eating leftovers.

  • Category: Pasta
  • Method: Stovetop
  • Cuisine: Italian

Keywords: roasted red pepper pasta, vegan pasta, cashew pasta, tomato pasta, pasta with tomatoes

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Thank you to DeLallo for sponsoring this recipe!

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Thursday, September 17, 2020

We Tried 10 of the Internet’s Best Instant Pot Recipes. And These Are Our Favorites.

Do you ever look at recipes online and wonder, are these really as delicious as they seem? Yeah, same.

And that’s right, over the last 6 weeks, Krista (our shoot assistant at POY and a blogger at Destination Delish) and I together made 10 of the Internet’s BEST Instant Pot recipes. Whoa.

We decided to pick out ten recipes from blogs and websites around the Internet that seem to have people all in a tizzy with their high reviews, pins, saves, comments, and all-around popularity, and actually put them to the test.

We grocery shopped, we sautéed, we natural-pressure-released, we sampled and sampled some more, we took notes, we raved, we critiqued, we felt happy eating a lot of really good food.

And here it is today – our big report. Our big Best Instant Pot Recipes report.

Here’s what you’ll get with each recipe:

  • a link to the recipe
  • a photo of how each recipe turned out for us
  • a list of what we liked about the recipe

And at the end, we attempted the impossible and picked our top three recipes out of this list that we think you NEED to try.

It was a long project, and it was really, really fun.

Are you ready?

Instant Pot Butter Chicken

Instant Pot Butter Chicken in a bowl.

Click here for this popular recipe from Two Sleevers.

What we loved:

  • The sauce is really, really, really good, and the leftovers get even better.
  • You’ll have extra sauce to save for another recipe later. Butter paneer, anyone?
  • No sautéing! Thank goodness.
  • Urvashi includes lots of detailed notes to help you be successful and get as close to traditional as you want (for example, making your own garam masala which is what we did)!

Instant Pot General Tso’s Chicken

Instant Pot General Tso's Chicken in a bowl.

Click here for this popular recipe from Jo Cooks.

What we loved:

  • Nice texture on the sauce: just thick enough, silky, savory, sweet.
  • This is a super easily adaptable recipe – you could add nuts, vegetables, more spice, etc. to make it exactly the way you want it.
  • Kid-friendly! Our families loved it.

Instant Pot Zuppa Toscana

Instant Pot Zuppa Toscana in a bowl.

Click here for this popular recipe from Damn Delicious.

What we loved:

  • We liked it when we tried it, but we LOVED it when we brought it home to our families that night for dinner. Overall: high yum factor.
  • Straightforward process, short-ish ingredient list. Just one sautéing step for the sausage, then dump everything in and cook.
  • Creamy and cozy, but still brothy enough to sop up with some crusty bread.

Instant Pot Spaghetti

Instant Pot Spaghetti in a bowl.

Click here for this popular recipe from The Salty Marshmallow.

What we loved:

  • Wonderfully super easy!
  • Something really delicious happens to the texture of the noodles when they cook in the Instant Pot – they get sticky and starchy with the sauce in a way that is just really nostalgic and comforting.
  • Very family-friendly: quick, adaptable, kids loved it.

Instant Pot Creamy Ziti

Instant Pot Baked Ziti in a bowl.

Click here for this popular recipe from Cooking with Karli.

What we loved:

  • Just pure carb and cheese decadence. Can’t beat the cozy factor.
  • Probably the easiest of all the Instant Pot recipes we tried!
  • Super kid and family friendly. It’s kind of one of those can’t-go-wrong recipes.

Instant Pot Chicken Tortilla Soup

Click here for this popular recipe from Feasting At Home.

What we loved:

  • Big-time flavor. We opted for chicken thighs instead of chicken breasts, and the juicy shreds of chicken did not disappoint.
  • This makes a HUGE batch of soup, and it is very freezer-friendly!
  • Kind of a blank slate of a recipe that goes with whatever toppings you like. We did tortilla strips, extra lime wedges, cilantro, and (unpictured) Cotija cheese.
  • A lot of Instant Pot recipes can get kind of heavy – this one was light and fresh-feeling, but still full of flavor. Awesome.

Instant Pot Mushroom Risotto

Click here for this popular recipe from All Recipes.

What we loved:

  • The creaminess, the earthiness of the mushrooms, and that rosemary in there! Oooh la la.
  • Much less maintenance than a normal batch of risotto.
  • Short-ish ingredient list – always something we like!

Instant Pot Loaded Potato Soup

Click here for this recipe from Belle of the Kitchen.

What we loved:

  • So super cozy, nostalgic, and family-friendly. This reminded me of something I would have grown up eating in small-town Minnesota.
  • Short and sweet ingredient list.
  • Potatoes kind of go with anything, so it gives you a good base where you can play with the toppings! We had it with bacon, cheddar cheese, and green onion, but I think you could go lots of directions with this, like adding roasted broccoli, kale pesto, grilled sourdough toasts, etc.

Instant Pot Orange Chicken

Click here for this popular recipe from Sweet and Savory.

What we loved:

  • We liked having the flavor of orange chicken without all the fried-ness of orange chicken.
  • The texture of the chicken ended up being really good – little bite-size pieces that kind of fell into tender shreds as we ate them.
  • Kids loved it, making it a good semi-healthy weeknight family recipe!

Instant Pot Chicken and Dumplings

Click here for this popular recipe from Simply Happy Foodie.

What we loved:

  • It is creamy, cozy, and nostalgic. Very, very delicious.
  • It actually had a lot of really good flavor – we really liked the combination of dry and fresh herbs that were used, and once again, the chicken thighs were delicious.
  • We opted to go for refrigerated biscuit dough dumplings rather than homemade (listen, we had made TEN of these recipes at this point) and actually, they were super good! So even if you don’t do the homemade dumplings you will get a very delicious end result.

The Winning Three Recipes

Oh my gosh, HOW TO DECIDE? This was unbelievably hard, and being that all these recipes are already extremely well-rated and popular, I think you could make any of these and be very happy with your choice.

We deliberated on this for a long time, reviewing our notes and ratings and calling back to mind all the taste-testing we’d been doing.

In the end, we landed on three recipes that just really spoke to us:

The base of our decision was how the recipes tasted, but we did also consider the amount of work involved with each recipe and, combining both the taste and ease factors and considering how likely we’d be to actually make them at home.

There are several others on this list that Krista mentioned she’d make again, and same goes for me. But if we listed them all for you, we’d just list the whole list again!

It was so super fun to try the best of Instant Pot recipes from around the internet. Thank you to the authors of these recipes for keeping us all well-fed with your delicious creations!

Readers: This is a new type of post for us! Tell us what you think! (Uhh, hopefully you liked it?) What was helpful, and what were you wishing for more of? It took several weeks to put this together, but we had so much fun doing this and would love to do more of it in the future.

And most importantly: which Instant Pot recipes do you think we need to try next?

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