I get so excited to make our Tomato Soup Recipe every year! My favorite time to make it is the very end of summer leading into fall. I’m able to find the best, super ripe and sweet roma tomatoes this time of year, which makes the best tasting tomato soup.
Our homemade tomato soup takes a little bit of time to make, but it’s totally worth it and very easy to make! My mouth waters every time I think about this soup! It’s incredible on its own, with a gooey grilled cheese (classic!) or with our buttery garlic bread!
How to Make Delicious Tomato Soup
Process
- Preheat oven to 375°F. Spread tomato halves onto a baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil. Season with salt and pepper.
- Roast tomatoes.
- While tomatoes are in the oven, melt the butter in a large pot. Add onion and sauté.
- Stir in the garlic and thyme and sauté.
- Add crushed tomatoes, basil leaves, dried basil, and sugar. Season with salt and pepper.
- Stir the mixture and reduce the heat to medium or medium-low and simmer.
- Pour broth and roasted tomatoes into the pot. Season with salt and pepper.
- Continue to simmer soup, stirring occasionally.
- Carefully pour hot soup into a blender.
- Place a clean dish towel over the closed lid and blend until smooth.
- Pour soup back into the pot.
- Stir in the cream until fully incorporated.
- Simmer tomato basil soup for 2 to 3 minutes before ladling into bowls. Top each serving of tomato soup with fresh basil leaves. Serve.
Tools You Will Need
- cutting board
- knife
- measuring spoons
- dry measuring cups
- liquid measuring cups
- mixing bowl
- wooden spoon
- blender (if using)
- large pot or Dutch oven
Fresh vs Canned Tomatoes for Our Tomato Soup Recipe
I mentioned earlier that I love using fresh roma tomatoes at their peak ripeness for our recipe and it’s true! Fresh roma tomatoes are my first preference because they have amazing flavor (that become even more concentrated and delicious once they’re roasted).
That doesn’t mean you can’t get amazing results with whole canned tomatoes. I love that high quality canned tomatoes are so readily available. The flavors are also already nicely concentrated, so the roasting step can be skipped all together (which will save you about 45 minutes!). Just add a 28 ounce can of whole peeled tomatoes to the pot, as you would with the roasted tomatoes.
Overall, the most important aspect of out tomato soup recipe is to use high quality tomatoes that have great flavor!
Why This is the BEST Tomato Soup Recipe!
- We roast our tomatoes, which really concentrates the delicious, sweet and acidic tomato flavor!
- We add basil (both fresh and dry…just trust us on this one) to our soup and it’s hard to find a better combo than tomato and basil!
- We add a touch of cream which adds a subtle, rich and creamy flavor to this extra cozy tomato basil soup recipe.
- The our homemade tomato soup truly has the best tomato forward flavor that’s super smooth, creamy, well balanced with the basil, and will warm you right up!
Make Ahead and Freezing Instructions
Make Ahead
Our tomato soup recipe can be made up to 5 days in advance. Cool the finished soup, transfer to an airtight container and refrigerate until ready to use. To reheat, pour soup into a pot and simmer over medium-low to medium heat, stirring occasionally, until heated through.
Freezing
Our soup can be frozen for up to 3 months. Cool the finished soup (leaving out the cream) transfer to an airtight container and freeze until ready to use. To thaw and reheat, transfer container of soup to refrigerator and thaw overnight. Once soup has thawed (a little frozen is okay), pour it into a post and simmer over medium-low to medium heat, stirring occasionally, until heated through. Once heated through, stir in cream simmer for a few minutes and serve.
Variations
- As I mentioned earlier, you can totally swap the fresh tomatoes our for canned ones.
- We love the tomato-basil combination of flavors, but if you’re more of a purist, you can omit the fresh and dried basils from the recipe, for more of a classic tomato soup.
- If you want a slightly healthier version, you can omit the cream and replace it with whole milk or plain yogurt.
- If you have an immersion blender, you can use that to puree the soup instead of a blender.
More Delicious Soup Recipes You Will Love
Tomato Soup Recipe
INGREDIENTS
- 1 ½ pounds Roma tomatoes, sliced lengthwise
- 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1 medium yellow onion, diced
- 4 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 tablespoon fresh thyme, minced
- 1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
- 2 cups basil leaves, roughly chopped
- 2 tablespoons dried basil
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 2 cups low sodium chicken broth
- salt and pepper to taste
- ⅔ cup heavy cream
INSTRUCTIONS
- Preheat oven to 375°F.
- Spread tomato halves onto a baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil. Season with salt and pepper.
- Roast tomatoes for about 45 minutes.
- While tomatoes are in the oven, melt the butter in a large pot over medium-high heat.
- Add onion and sauté for 5 minutes.
- Stir in the garlic and thyme and sauté for another 5 minutes.
- Add crushed tomatoes, basils and sugar. Season with salt and pepper.
- Stir the mixture and reduce the heat to medium or medium-low and simmer for 10 minutes.
- Pour broth and roasted tomatoes into the pot. Season with salt and pepper.
- Continue to simmer soup, for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Carefully pour soup into a blender and blend until smooth.
- Pour soup back into the pot and stir in the cream until fully incorporated.
- Simmer the soup for 2 to 3 minutes before ladling into bowls.
- Top each soup with fresh basil leaves. Serve.
NOTES
- As I mentioned earlier, you can totally swap the fresh tomatoes our for canned ones.
- We love the tomato-basil combination of flavors, but if you’re more of a purist, you can omit the fresh and dried basils from the recipe, for more of a classic tomato soup.
- If you want a slightly healthier version, you can omit the cream and replace it with whole milk or plain yogurt.
- If you have an immersion blender, you can use that to puree the soup instead of a blender.
Did you make this recipe? We want to see!
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If you use canned tomatoes, do you add the juice as well?
Just the tomatoes, no juices!
I loved it! Thank you for sharing this recipe.
I love this recipe and so do my neighbors. I love this soup with a grilled cheese, bacon, basil and drizzle of hot honey sandwich.
The soup is amazing. Creamy rich and full of flavor. I love making this soup on the weeking with a gourmet grilled cheese sandwich.
Do you know how many calories are in a serving?
Hi Corbin, we have updated the recipe with this information. Thanks!
This is my daughter’s favourite recipe for tomato sup, I love it too!
Go for it!!!
Making this for my parents tonight! Looks lovely! I’m going to bake some pita chips for the side. Thank you for the recipe!
What a fantastic recipe. Will definitely try this! Tomatoes are always the best!
Monica from Mama Bee Simple
I was dying for my tomato soup, but couldn’t find my standby recipe. It was so good and the lose – I felt I lost a friend. So started to look into recipes on the internet. After reading many – looking at the calories, etc. I read yours. And the comments is what kept me reading. It certainly sounds like you have a winner. I am using my canned tomatoes as I have done before when fresh are all gone, and my canned soup is also gone. I have true confidence that this will be my #1 recipe. Thanks
I made this with goat cheese in place of the heavy cream… It was so good I could have cried
I just made this soup!!! OMG!!! Everybody licked their plates!!! So good!
Thank you for the recipe
It’s freaking hot here in Texas But I think i’m gonna make it anyway! I can’t wait til Winter! Looks good!
This is the best tomato soup I have ever had. Am making it again for the second time. I make a big pot and I freeze it. Thank you so much for sharing this recipe with us!
OMG! falling over with how great this tasted!!! I had to comment, LOVE,LOVE,LOVE!
I have made this too many times to count [paired with grilled cheese it is my boyfriends favorite meal ever]. Thank you for such a wonderful recipe!
I made this soup and it was amazing! I added chopped crispy bacon as a topping and it was perfect! Thanks for the wonderful recipe!
I live in the town you grew up in and my entire family loves that soup. They opened a small shop next door where you can buy the soup out of the cooler and heat it up at home for dinner. It’s the best tomato basil ever. I make a close one, but will try your variety to see if it’s more dead on. The noodle rocks.
Yummy recipe! Is that a fried basil leaf I see? Flash-Deep frying basil leaves are absolutely DIVINE, when you add them to an egg-white breakfast taco…MMM Jam packed with flavor!
OMG!!! I made this soup yesterday, WOW!!! Great taste & very easy to make. I left my soup a little chunky. I will make this again & again.
Thank you for posting!!!
This turned out great! I used veggie broth to make it vegetarian. Next time it will definitely get paired with grilled cheese.
Oh YUM. Just made this with only a few student budget/diet tweaks and it was delicious. Added some piment d’Espelette for a little kick and it mixed really well with the basil. The pot is still full and I can’t wait for tomorrow to have some for lunch!
Can you post directions to making this in a Vitamix?
Hi Marnie,
All the instructions are the same, you just sub out your blender for vitamix! I have a vitamix and it’s my favorite thing to purée with!
I need some freezing instructions for the tomato basil soup. Leave out the fried basil and goat cheese when freezing and add when serving? Any other freezing tips?
Made it. Loved it. Actually made a double batch!
Two thumbs up! We made this last night and it was delicious!! We just used the ugly “canners” from the farmers market because they were a dollar a pound and used milk instead of cream. We served it with pesto grilled cheese. Yum! Thanks for the great recipe!