Elevate The Taste And Texture Of Canned Tomato Soup With Toasted Nuts

Short on time, you reach for the canned soup in your cupboards to put together a quick meal. While the soup simmers on your stove, get ready to turn your ready-made ingredients into a presentation that looks made from scratch. With a simple garnish of toasted nuts, your bowl of soup can offer a feast not only for your eyes but also for your growling stomach.

Adding a soup garnish is one of the easiest ways you can elevate your dish, and sprinkling a handful of toasted nuts over the surface of your ladled soup is a culinary move that requires little skill. Whether you buy pre-packaged almonds that have been slivered, roasted, and seasoned or have set out to toast a few packages of delicate pignoli or pine nuts in your kitchen, the simple addition can quickly convert a so-so meal into a memorable one. Once you've crowded one soup bowl with crunchy pieces of nuts, you'll be looking for other ways to add texture and flavor to these easy comforting dishes. 

Your soup creations don't need to stop with roasted nuts. Reach for nut-adjacent seeds like sunflower, pumpkin, and sesame to toast and add to your bowls of soup. Enhance the flavor of your soup-bowl add-ins by seasoning your toasted nuts with everything but the bagel seasoning blends, dukkah, or a dash of smokey paprika. Once you've identified the flavor combinations you enjoy most, you can roast a batch of seeds and nuts, season them to your liking, and store them for easy access for the next time a soup craving strikes. 

Topped with dollops of yogurt, sour cream, freshly chopped herbs, or drizzles of balsamic vinegar, the soup bowls you end up placing onto the dining room table will look nothing like the canned ingredient you poured into the pot on your stove. Served with a side of warm garlic bread, these garnished soup bowls may easily pass as homemade.