How to Make Cream of Tomato Soup – An Old Family Recipe
Ok well I don’t actually have a recipe perse. But this is a soup that I learned how to make from my mother, who in turn learned how from my father’s mother. I am not actually sure how far back beyond that the recipe goes, but I can only assume that my grandmother learned it in turn from HER mother as much of the family has a version of this soup.
Mine is best, SHHH
The smell of it cooking on the stove is enough to make me happy. The first taste always brings back happy memories of childhood … sneaking a few raw carrot coins … eating a warm bowl of soup after spending hours playing in the snow.
My hubby, who never ate it till after we were a couple loves it, my father gives me full credit as the only person in the family who knows how to make it right.
Both my kids LOVE this soup, even the 6-year-old who is in an “I don’t like soup” phase
And for the record this soup tastes NOTHING like any jarred or canned soup out there. I cannot stand any of them, they all SUCK, this soup ROCKS. This is what you need to do.
In a large, but not “baby boiling size”, pot:
- Boil marrow beef bones skimming off the scum that rises to the surface
- Once the scum-skimming stops (say that 3xs fast), add one large yellow onion – peeled but left whole
2-3 lbs. of carrots – peeled and sliced into medium thick rounds, and a few stalks of celery – WHOLE - Allow to simmer for about an hour
- Add cans of either crushed tomatoes or tomato puree (taste won’t change but crushed tomatoes will add some textural interest) to create a mixture of about 1/2 water 1/2 canned tomato
- Allow to simmer for about 2 hours
- Remove celery stalks and throw away
- Remove marrow bones – but make sure the marrow stays behind in the soup
- Season to taste with salt and black pepper
- Add heavy cream a little at a time until the soup is a little bit darker than the color of a ripe pumpkin
- Simmer for at least another 30 minutes for flavors to meld
Serve HOT over precooked and COLD elbow noodles
BTW this soup gets better every day, you can freeze the excess but the flavor does suffer a bit, it tends to get bland
Options:
vegetarians can make a stock out of mushrooms instead of using marrow bones – with this I do recommend adding some green herbs at seasoning time – ie parsley and thyme are especially nice options, I was vegetarian for 3 years in my early 20s and made it this way quite successfully
For those that do eat meat you can also add short ribs to the stock — add them after you finish with the first cooking of the marrow bones — simmer for about 30 minutes and THEN add the carrots …. remove them BEFORE adding the cream and slice off the edible meat into tiny bits and add back to the soup AFTER adding the cream
No matter how you make your stock — I do like to add spinach at the end sometimes …. take a box of frozen chopped spinach defrost and squeeze out excess liquid ….. add to soup after you add the heavy cream and simmer for an additional half hour
For those who don’t detest, as we do, the texture of cooked celery you can slice it and add it along with the sliced carrots
Sorry the recipe isn’t more specific, but I am at least the 3rd generation cooking it and no one has ever written it down.
Enjoy!
Blessings
Mama Kelly
Related reading:
Good & Garlicky, Thick & Hearty, Soul-Satisfying, More-Than-Minestrone Italian Soup Cookbook
The Everything Soup Cookbook (Everything Series)
Book of Soups: More than 100 Recipes for Perfect Soups
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