Saturday, January 7, 2012

Homemade Tomato Soup {Sam}

One of my personal goals for the year is to make healthier food and to have it more readily available.  Making double batches of things and then freezing them for later is one way I am going to accomplish it.  This way on those nights when nobody feels like cooking, there is still something healthy to pull out of the freezer and heat up instead of either resorting to eating out or eating chicken strips and egg rolls.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy chicken strips and egg rolls, but I don’t want them every night! 

This week I decided to make some homemade tomato soup!  Soup is perfect for winter time and healthy and goes great with a turkey-cheddar Panini if I feel so inclined!  After doing some research on various recipes I decided on a recipe from Two Peas and Their Pod.  I absolutely love this food blog, and highly recommend it for some great recipes!!  Everything I have tried so far has been a hit!  I found this recipe on their 50 Healthy Recipes to Kick off 2012 list and in anticipation of its greatness bought enough ingredients to double the batch and freeze some for later!  I am SO glad I did!!

For the actual recipe, visit here: Roasted Tomato Basil Soup

Here are the basics of how I did it: 

Ingredients (Minus Tomatoes because they were already roasting in the oven)

Roasted Tomatoes, The recipe said to roast them for 45 minutes, but I think I left them in there for about an hour, maybe even 1hour and 15minutes.  Partly because I got distracted with something else, partly because they just didn’t seem roasted enough to me. 

Cooking the onions for a few minutes until tender… See, they are starting to turn more translucent!

Added red pepper flakes and garlic!!  Side note – wish I had measured so I could recreate next time, but I added a few more red pepper flakes than they called for (maybe double, maybe a little less than double), but it was the perfect amount of spicy heat in the end!!

After adding the vegetable stock, basil and diced tomatoes.

Finished roasted tomatoes!

Everything is in the pot… I can’t even begin to describe the smell in my house at this point, but it was MAGNIFI-SCENT!  ;)

After letting everything cook together for another 30minutes.

Used my trusty Immersion Blender, and voila!!  Soup!!

See all the little flecks of basil!  Oh delicious basil, I couldn’t live without your tasty-ness!  J

Like I said, perfect with a turkey-cheddar Panini!  Had the same exact thing for lunch the next day too!

The double batch I made was enough for dinner and lunch for two (not huge bowls), and then I separated the rest into six bags and froze them!  So in all, this doubled recipe will create the center of 8 meals total!  That is definitely a win in my book!  And I’m so looking forward to the next time I don’t feel like cooking!  ;)

Sam

2 comments:

  1. Oh, yeah, so that's where those bowls are! This week's soup on the menu plan is corn chowder, but next week I think we're gonna do this tomato soup again! YUM! I'm especially excited by that big old pile of chopped basil in the first picture!

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