Fresh Tomato Soup

When Ryan and I had a bunch of tomatoes from our garden, we thought that maybe we could try making some homemade tomato soup! It was a good way to use up a lot of the tomatoes we had before they went bad. After looking at the ingredients on canned tomato soup (yuck!), I thought homemade tomato soup would be a good idea. :) I searched the internet and found the recipe below (found here).


Ingredients:
3 medium tomatoes, peeled and quartered
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup chopped onion (1 medium)
1/2 cup chopped celery (1 stalk)
1/2 6 ounce can (1/3 cup) tomato paste
2 tablespoons snipped fresh cilantro or basil
2 teaspoons instant chicken bouillon granules
1 teaspoon sugar
Few dashes bottled hot pepper sauce
Snipped fresh cilantro or basil (optional)

Directions:
If desired, seed the tomatoes. In a large saucepan combine tomatoes, water, onion, celery, tomato paste, the 2 tablespoons cilantro, bouillon granules, sugar, and hot pepper sauce. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Simmer, covered, about 20 minutes or until celery and onion are very tender. Remove from heat and cool for 10 minutes.

Place half of the tomato mixture in a blender or food processor. Cover and blend or process until smooth. Repeat with the remaining mixture. Return all to the saucepan; heat through. If desired, garnish with additional cilantro.

Makes 4 servings (4 cups)


The nutrition facts on the website says that one serving (1 cup) of the soup is 53 calories. Just for fun, I looked to see how many calories canned tomato soup has -- 90 calories for 1/2 cup, which would be 180 for 1 cup. Crazy, the difference in calories between this homemade tomato soup and canned tomato soup! I made this soup twice and tripled or quadrupled it each time so that I could use more tomatoes. (I think I quadrupled it so I could use 2 full cans of tomato paste--since the single recipe calls for 1/2 a can.) The first time I made it, we didn't have celery. It was ok. The second time I made it, I added celery to it and it was a lot better! So I recommend the celery. Also, I didn't put as much hot pepper sauce in it the second time. It was a little too spicy the first time I made it, so just a couple of dashes of the hot sauce is plenty (when quadrupling it).