Cream of Tomato Soup

Easy, yummy way to make Cream of Tomato soup. I use home canned tomatoes and stewed tomatoes, but store-bought is fine. Don’t use margarine - the water in it can make the roux lumpy. If you don’t have stewed tomatoes, you can use 4 cans of diced tomatoes and sauté ½ cup of minced onion in the butter until tender before adding flour.

• Ready In: 20 mins
• Serves: 8

Ingredients

• 2 (14 -16 ounce) cans stewed tomatoes
• 2 (14 -16 ounce) cans diced tomatoes with juice
• 1⁄4 cup butter (preferred) or 1⁄4 cup  oil
• 3  tablespoons flour
• 2  tablespoons brown sugar
• 1  tablespoon tomato paste
• 1  pinch allspice
• 1 3⁄4 cups chicken broth, low sodium preferred
• 1 1⁄2-2  cups heavy cream or 1 1⁄2-2  cups half-and-half or 1 1⁄2-2  cups milk
•  salt and pepper

Directions

1. Place a strainer over a large measuring cup. Drain and SAVE the juice from both stewed and diced tomatoes. Press down on the tomatoes with the back of a spoon to drain more juice. Measure 3 cups juice, discard excess or save for another use. (Bloody Mary anyone?) Set aside both juice and tomatoes.
2. Melt the butter in a large pot, sprinkle in the flour; stir and cook 1 minute. Add the brown sugar, tomato paste and allspice; stir.
3. Whisk in the chicken broth gradually; then add the reserved tomato juice and both kinds of tomatoes.
4. Bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Reduce to a simmer and cook 10 minutes.
5. Puree with an immersion blender, food processor or blender. Don’t fill more than halfway if using a food processor or blender and cover with a kitchen towel before turning it on. Leave as chunky as you like and call it a bisque or puree smooth for cream soup.
6. Pour through a strainer into the same pot.
7. Heat cream/milk in microwave until steaming, stir into soup. Heating the cream/milk helps keep it from curdling.
8. Bring back to simmer. Do not boil after adding cream/milk - it will curdle. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper, more cream/milk or more sugar if desired.
9. Pureeing tomato seeds can make the soup a little bitter; adding a little more brown sugar will remove the bitterness.