Why You Should Skip Restaurant Tomato Soup And Make It At Home Instead

Fall is right around the corner, which means it is time once again to embrace the cozy, warm comfort of soups. Keeping with the cozy theme, there's also no need to leave the house when trying to find a fantastic soup. While some more involved soups like pho or birria may be best left in the hands of professionals, other varieties of soup are simply better when made at home. One soup that is hardly worth it when ordered from a restaurant is tomato soup. This rich, flavorful soup is a favorite all year round, and deserves the care and attention that comes from making it at home.

To increase their profits, restaurants will oftentimes make their tomato soup extra watery, resulting in something that more closely resembles tomato juice. A good tomato soup should be thick and creamy, which can easily be achieved at home. Start by chopping up four cups of tomatoes, a bit of onion, and four cloves of garlic. Toss everything into a pot along with two cups of chicken broth and set the mixture to medium heat. When the pot starts to boil, lower the heat to a simmer.

After letting everything simmer for 20 minutes, pour the contents of the pot into a food mill, a food processor, a blender, or a large bowl so that you can use an immersion blender to purée the mixture. Meanwhile, return to the cooking pot (which should still be on a stove set to medium) and add two tablespoons of butter and flour. Use a whisk to mix the ingredients until you've created a roux. Then, slowly add in your puréed tomato while stirring continuously. Add a bit of sugar, salt, or other seasonings to your liking, and you're all done! All you need now is a grilled cheese sandwich.

The entire process of cooking your soup should take less than 40 minutes, but if that sounds like too much, you can get dinner ready even faster by using some simple techniques to elevate canned tomato soup. Either way, you should be left with something much more satisfying and with more depth of flavor than the tomato soup you would get from a restaurant.

Cooking isn't everyone's cup of tea, and there are certainly some dishes that are better when someone else makes them for you. But if you want a truly tasty meal, or if you're just trying to save a few bucks, making your own tomato soup is definitely worth it.