Roasted Tomato Soup Recipe

Do you want to know the "secret" behind making a great soup? Alright, as you probably guessed from the quotation marks we used on the word "secret" there, it's really not so mysterious or secretive after all: to make a great soup, just use great ingredients and keep it as simple as you can so those ingredients can shine. In the case of this roasted tomato soup recipe from Catherine Brookes, the recipe developer behind Blue Sky Eating, those ingredients involved roasted tomatoes, basil, and heavy cream, so you know you're going to have a treat on your hands.

"This is such a great one to enjoy as the cooler weather starts to come in," Brookes says. It's also ideal to seek out fresh tomatoes in early autumn when the last bountiful harvests are ready. Another thing you'll love about this soup is the fact that it requires only about 10 minutes of hands-on work, yet its great taste will be remembered all season long.

To make this rich, comforting soup, you'll need plenty of baby plum tomatoes, a couple of large onions, quartered, some whole garlic cloves, olive oil, salt and pepper to taste, vegetable stock, heavy cream, and a generous amount of fresh basil. And that's it! As you likely surmised, that roasting really brings out the deliciousness here. And the heavy cream. Also Brookes notes: "I'd say the addition of fresh basil gives it that extra kick of flavor that goes so well with the tomatoes and garlic."

To start things off, preheat that oven to 400 F. Then separate out the garlic cloves (note: don't peel them), quarter the onions, and evenly spread the garlic, onions, and tomatoes out in a baking pan. (Don't bother lining the pan with parchment paper, it's still going to require some cleaning, FYI, and you want the juices.) Next, drizzle olive oil over these veggies, then sprinkle on salt and pepper, adding as much as you'd like based on your preference.

"This is a pretty straightforward [recipe],"Brookes says, but she adds, "Just make sure to leave the skin on the garlic while it roasts otherwise it may burn. Then once you're ready to blend everything simply peel it off and you'll have delicious soft roasted garlic that will add so much flavor to the soup!"

Roast the tomatoes, garlic, and onions for 40 minutes at 400 F, then retrieve the pan from the oven. Let everything cool a bit, just 5 minutes or so, then peel the garlic and discard the papery "skin." Now we'll blend everything together and finish this soup.

Now it's time to add all of the ingredients (save a few extra basil leaves and a drizzle of cream) to the blender, so that's the roasted veggies, the vegetable stock, the heavy cream, and the basil going in there. Close the blender up, secure the top (and maybe hold it down with a dish towel, too), and then blend away, running the device until the soup is completely smooth.

Then serve out portions into bowls. "Serve it with an extra drizzle of cream and some basil leaves," says Brookes, explaining that this step is optional, but it's very well advised! Got extra? She adds: "It should keep well covered in the fridge up to 4 days and can also be frozen."